How a north London web-designer began a campaign that deluged the Guardian with emails.2
David Leigh
Guardian
Thursday February 22, 2001
Why would the Guardian provide moral and medical justification for the multiple murder of innocent Israeli civilians?
It's a pretty bizarre question, but we found ourselves being asked it over and over again this week. Emails clicked in to the letters page by the hundred, all making the same weirdly alliterative points. This followed publication of a Guardian article trying to understand the motivations of the Palestinian bus driver who ploughed into a queue this month, killing eight Israelis. 3
The mysteriously similar emails - from all over the world - started coming in, too, to our foreign editor; to our website; and to the personal email address of our Middle East correspondent, Suzanne Goldenberg.
They were inconvenient, and also sometimes a bit scary in their violent tone - "The bloody Guardian... Have you killed a Jew today?... Are you anti-Jewish?... Unrelenting Guardian anti-Israel bias... Why would the Guardian provide moral and medical justification etc...?'
This global blitzing was tending to crowd out genuine expressions of opinion from our readers.4 Our suspicions aroused, we tried to discover what was going on. It wasn't straightforward. But eventually we discovered the trick. A website calling itself HonestReporting.com was set up in London last autumn. 5
It has recruited 12,000 subscribers to its database, it claims, all dedicated to fighting anti-Israel "bias" in the media. The aim was to recruit a total of 25,000.
Every time someone writes something they don't like, details of the offending article are circulated round the world, together with a handy form of protesting words, ready to be lightly embroidered and electronically dispatched at the push of a button.
"This is what you should do," they tell their members "Forward it on to the news company concerned at the email address provided. If you can, please change the subject of the email to 'complaint' or something similar." 6
Their first success, HonestReporting boasted, was with the London Evening Standard. Its columnist Brian Sewell wrote last autumn calling on Israel to "become a multicultural society" and cease exploiting the Holocaust to justify unacceptable behaviour.
"The next day, [we] sent out a letter to subscribers." Standard articles recorded "a wave of complaints... hundreds of Jewish readers have written in". Then "after more pressure" there followed a pro-Israel article by Simon Sebag-Montefiore. "This is an example of what we can do."
And now it was the Guardian's turn to get the email treatment. A long electronic bulletin went out headed: "The Guardian: a mainstream British newspaper consistently blames Israel for everything."
It complained that a Steve Bell cartoon showing Sharon's bloody handprints on the Wailing Wall "encroaches on brash anti-semitism". It complained that a Muslim, Faisal Bodi, had written questioning Israel's right to statehood; and complained that the Guardian had said Sharon had killed the peace process. "No blame is assigned to Arafat." And there too, was our old alliterative friend: "Why would the Guardian provide moral and medical justification...?"
Who was behind this internet harassment? The website gave no address. It had been registered last October under a London name and phone number that seemed not to exist. Eventually, it transpired that it had been set up by a 27-year-old Jewish web-designer from north London called Jonathan. "Don't give my full name," he asked. "Someone was killed in Stamford Hill [the Jewish district] the other day." He and his friends came up with the idea by themselves: "We were just brainstorming."
But the operation was now being funded and run from the US by an organisation concerned with media fairness, Media Watch International.
And who were they? "We're pretty new," says their director, Sharon Tzur, speaking from Manhattan. "It's a group of concerned Jewish business people in New York."
Yet a bit more inquiry reveals that this is not quite the whole story either. For this week's bulletin denouncing the Guardian was in fact composed in Israel by a man named Shraga Simmons.
And when he is not working for HonestReporting, Mr Simmons is to be found employed at another organisation altogether - Aish HaTora. This is an international group promoting orthodox Judaism. "I do some work for Aish," Mr Simmons says, from Israel. And Jonathan, the web-designer who started it all in London, also concedes: "I go to the odd class at Aish." 7
Aish verge on the colourful in their antics. Founded by Rabbi Noah Weinberg, who complains that "20,000 kids a year" are being lost to Judaism by marrying out, Aish invented speed-dating - eight-minute sessions in cafes to help New Yorkers find compatible Jewish partners. They're widely regarded as rightwing extremists. And they're certainly not people entitled to harass the media into what they would call "objectivity". 8
I've tackled this article here, because the Guardian's reaction is newsworthy in itself. It demonstrates an "attitude problem" so convincingly I decided to showcase it - probably not the intent of its author. While other news outlets have corrected, reworded or at least responded to the allegations, the Guardian has consistently denied any of its content suffers from this problem. It would be a brave editor indeed that would claim everything that went to press was beyond reproach on any topic: yet the Guardian does. I hope airing it here will contribute to the battering their reputation deserves. You be the judge.
The article employs the tactic of not responding to the allegations, instead focusing on the group making them. More simply: playing the player, not the ball.
1 Rather interesting title, that misses the point. The Guardian is accused of manipulating the truth. Implicit in their title is that the media, by definition, is the truth - that is the extent of their defence.
2 Notice the patronisation of the person who started the campaign. Ordinarily, this display of grass roots activism would be commended by Guardian reporters as democracy in action. A grass roots group that tackles the vast resources of a major media outlet over a perceived injustice.
3 This point is to be taken as a clarification: confronted with what they were doing, they have wisely decided to call a spade a spade and said "why would we justify murder"? But the question is answered with a question: so why did they justify murder?
4 The Guardian looks over the bulk of the emails in their mailbox, and looks for "genuine" expressions of interest from their readers. A case of not seeing the forest for the trees. This does illustrate what happens when bias invades one's thought processes: all evidence to the contrary is conveniently filtered out before you ever need think about it. The Guardian then spends time looking for the feedback they want to hear.
5 Interestingly enough, this is plainly displayed on their website.
6 The Guardian has this image of tens of thousands of mindless drones, dressed in black Chasidic garb, typing away at the keyboard, diligently doing as they are told.
7 This then develops into the conspiracy theory - a 27 year old Jewish web designer couldn't possibly have the intellectual horsepower to think of this on his own.
8 The Guardian didn't even bother addressing the allegation. "They're widely regarded as right-wing extremists" (the irony: many regard Guardian reporters as left-wing extremists). Personally, I don't care what kind of extremist you may be, in a democracy you still have the right to make a point, and expect a straight answer. It shows an above-the-law arrogance, the previously mentioned "attitude problem" that plagues the Guardian. If the dating practices of the orthodox Jewish community is the best you can come up with when accused of something as serious as media bias, then I suggest you come from a weak position indeed.
Let me give the Mr Leigh, and the Guardian editorial staff who undoubtably passed this article with special attention, a little lesson in Democracy 101. The irony of should not be lost on the reader, for indeed, editors are supposed to be the "guardians" of the democratic process, and when required can step out from their partisan views and defend the system as a whole. Sorry it has to come from a mere citizen.
It doesn't matter what peoples' religious beliefs and practices are, so long as they don't harm others, pay their taxes and obey the law. The Guardian is quite capable of absorbing this message with other groups: but apparently have a double standard for Jews, especially religious ones. It doesn't matter if your hair is died blue, or you have a nose-ring. This point is simply irrelevant, and shouldn't be there.
"And they're certainly not people entitled to harass the media into what they would call 'objectivity'": now we see the significance of the "web designer" comment at the start. Apparently, only professional journalists, and a select group of others, have the necessary training to question the media.
I wonder if Anglicans are entitled. Or Catholics? Muslims? Atheists perhaps? In a democracy this wasn't supposed to matter: you didn't question someone's objectivity because of these beliefs, or lack of them; you didn't question someone's objectivity because they vote left or right: you focused on the merits of the issue.
In a democracy all people have a right to question the institutions that serve them. Letters to the editor are not harassment: that's how papers work. If Mr Leigh and his editors feel the need to clarify this, I suggest they enrol themselves in a journalism course at one of London's fine tertiary institutions, at their earliest convenience.
Ben S.
Sydney, Australia.