 | By Jenni Frazer
August 24, 2009 | Share |
Using the not unreasonable hook of press freedom, Roy Greenslade in today's Media Guardian presented a factual account of the Israeli government's building annoyance with the Swedish authorities over the Aftonbladet row.
For new readers, this was the Swedish newspaper's decision to run a story claiming that Israeli soldiers were routinely harvesting body parts from captured Palestinians.
As the Israeli fury with the Swedish government has escalated, so has the annoyance risen of the Swedish Jewish community with the Israeli government. Swedish Jews have complained that the Israeli government, for reasons best known to itself, has manufactured a row where none needed to exist, and made their lives twice as difficult, unnecessarily.
I had a certain sympathy with this Swedish Jewish point of view until I read the comments following Roy Greenslade's article. For sheer, vicious loathing of Israel, you'd find these hard to beat, bearing in mind that a good third of the comments have already been removed by the Guardian moderators for a variety of breaches of the Guardian web guidelines.
Even Alan Rusbridger ought by now to have come to an understanding that any mention of Israel on the web pages of his newspaper brings the antisemites out of the woodwork, no matter how spurious the excuse.
Jonathan Hoffman
26 August, 2009 - 16:28
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Precisely Jenni
There is a great new blog called 'CIF Watch' to monitor antisemitism on Guardian CIF
www.cifwatch.com