Posted by Emily Gian on 20 February 2012 at 10:34pm:

Earlier this month, the noted American commentator and jurist Alan Dershowitz wrote a thought provoking article entitled ‘How the Hard Left, By Focusing Only on Israel, Encouraged Arab Despotism’.

He described how the hard left and others have long ignored the despotism of virtually all Arab regimes whilst, at the same time condemning the Middle East’s only true democracy. With the phenomenon of the Arab Spring now entering its second year, Dershowitz notes that the radicals “are jumping on the bandwagon of condemnation, though still not with the fury that they reserve for the one nation in the Middle East that has complete free speech, gender equality, gay rights, an open and critical press, an independent judiciary and fair and open elections.”

We’re all aware of the identity of that nation and of the double standards that have led to a breakdown in the provision of relief for those in the region whose human rights really need protection – the citizens of the most despotic regimes on the face of the earth.

Dershowitz points out that … “Unless we restore human rights to its proper role as a neutral and universal standard of human conduct, the kind of tyranny and despotism that stimulated the current protests will continue.”

It was with the Dershowitz article in mind that I considered the news from the Middle East over the weekend.

Today’s Australian and The Age both reported on the horrible news about Syrian forces of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime firing on mourners at a funeral.

Since March 2011, the revolt against Assad’s regime has resulted in the death of an estimated 6,000 people, many of them civilians murdered in cold blood by government troops but it has only been in recent times that the media has seriously taken up the story of the horrors of this war and the way this regime treats its people.

But many in the media, particularly those who like to consider themselves in tune with progressive thought, still prefer to present news from this part of the world by concentrating on Israel and its perceived excesses.

The media story of the day is that of Khader Adnan. The story is a simple one of a humble Palestinian baker arrested apparently for no reason by a brutal Israeli army protesting his detention by going on a hunger strike.

Adnan is now on his 64th day of the hunger strike and close to death. He is becoming quite a celebrity in the media, particularly the social media where the 140-character limit is enough space to celebrate Adnan and disparage the Israelis, without venturing deeply into the story.

For examples of how Khader Adnan’s story has been portrayed in the media please read ‘Israel shackles Palestinian hunger striker Khader Adnan’ by Hariet Sherwood from the Guardian, and today’s offering from Ruth Pollard in the Age entitled ‘Riots feared as hunger strikers health worsens’.

Adnan has been held without charge under administrative detention since the middle of December, and has been on a hunger strike since the day after his arrest. It is claimed he began the hunger strike to draw attention to administrative detention, which ‘refers to arrests carried out by the IDF on behalf of the Shin Bet, in which the detainee is not informed of the charges against him and is not brought before a judge to contest his arrest’. In January, he was given a four-month administrative detention order.

Very scant reference has been made in both stories as to why Adnan was arrested as though it is not entirely relevant to the tale that the journalists want to weave. The inconvenient truth is that Adnan is not simply a member of Islamic Jihad, but also a spokesperson and one of its political leaders.

Pollard deals with it as follows: “Israel has in the past alleged he acted as a spokesman for the Iran-backed militant group Islamic Jihad”. She informs us that Adnan’s wife denies any allegations and says ‘Israel never produced evidence he was a senior figure within the Islamic Jihad’. Notice there is no outright denial – simply that Israel has not produced the evidence. CiF Watch notes Sherwood’s Guardian article also “uncritically cited” Adnan’s wife (see more).

Neither article bothers to mention that Islamic Jihad is a recognised terror organization in Australia, the UK, the US and the EU. Another inconvenient truth is that its goal is ‘the creation of an Islamic Palestinian state and the destruction of Israel through holy war’ (see more).

So if the Guardian and The Age won’t enlighten their readers who will? The JewishPress.com has an interesting piece about Adnan’s background. As recently as 2005 he was cited in the Boston Globe as a Islamic Jihad spokesman where he was quoted as ‘repudiating any sort of ceasefire with Israel, and urging all Palestinian terror groups to resume fighting with Israel’. In an interview with al Jazeera in the same year he declared “we the PA and all the Palestinian people are in one trench and targeting the Zionist enemy”. The same article notes that he was more recently described by an Arab news source as “Sheikh Khader Adnan, the political leader of the Islamic Jihad movement in Palestine”. Furthermore, this is not Adnan’s first arrest, nor it is his first hunger strike. The international media did not care too much for Khader Adnan’s well-being when he was being detained in a Palestine Authority jail.

The truth is that some people have been cooking up stories about their humble little baker and Adnan is fortunate enough to have been arrested by democratic Israel. The world knows that when Gilad Shalit was incarcerated by Hamas, he was given not even the most basic human right.

The issue of the administrative detention is a vexed one in any society but in Israel, where threats of violence against its citizens by terror groups such as Islamic Jihad are routine daily matters and thousands have been killed or injured in terrorist attacks, a balance must be maintained between the rights of the individual and the ability of the state to ensure that its citizens can survive and exist.

Sherwood and Pollard are unable to hide the fact that Adnan’s case has been taken to Israel’s High Court of Justice and will be heard on Thursday. Adnan has the right to a hearing with advocates arguing his case and if there is no basis for his continued detention, then he will ultimately walk free. This is what happens in democratic states*.

Adnan will certainly not be treated in the way Bashar al-Assad’s regime treats its citizens or how Adnan’s own people would treat the Israelis.

This article appeared at the weekend in Haaretz newspaper entitled ‘Palestinian television still glorifies attacks against Israel’. Incitement against Israel persists in Palestinian television and radio broadcasts, where places such a Haifa and Tel Aviv are considered to be part of ‘occupied Palestine.’

I wait with bated breath to see how Ruth Pollard and The Age cover this story (if at all).

* I have added to the original text by amplifying the situation with regard to Israel’s dilemma regarding administrative detention of terror suspects. The subject is a complex one capable of filling volumes of text.

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01 – Norman: The Poor Palestinian Baker

Another excellent piece exposing the hypocrisy, wilful ignorance and inherent if often unconscious anti-Semitism of the left liberal intellectuals, especially those in the media.  The facts are repressed, the story distorted, and the bias manifest in the account of the poor little Palestinian baker.
 
The problem remains how to change the environment in which such falsifications are written, printed and received as the truth, and the real story brought out into the open and not just passed among the hands of those who already know how to read and think because they have a context and an experience in the world.

Dershowitz and others give their time, energy and fortunes to the cause, and there are others in Australia, too, but somehow all of this is never enough.

Norman