Samizdata

I urge you to read a post by Stephen Pollard. He links to a Guardian articled headed, breathtakingly, “Welsh pensioner turns freedom fighter”. Why do I say “breathtakingly”? Because the freedom-fighting of the woman profiled by the Guardian, Anne Gwynne, consists of the fact that she went to ‘Occupied Palestine’ the better to be chummy with the families of two suicide bombers who killed twenty-three Israeli civilians. Or who “went on the mission to Tel Aviv” as she winningly puts it, before adding, “They are such lovely families and very proud of their sons.”

The woman herself is of a recurring though despicable type: the White Liberal Murder-Groupie. OK, you’ve seen her like before, swooning over the Khmer Rouge or the Black Panthers. We are up to about Mk VIII by now, with Improved Extra Gush Factor. Let us wash our minds of her and move on.

But the Guardian’s commentary hits a new low, and the Guardian once had some honour to lose. Did you know that it was once the Manchester Guardian, provincial in the best sense, standing for a tradition of Nonconformist self-improvement? Think on that and then re-read that headline describing a woman who pants to to further help the killers in their bloody work: Welsh pensioner turns freedom fighter.

Then look at the first sentence: Anne Gwynne is conducting her own war on terrorism. Mrs Gwynne did not write that, the reporter, Chris McGreal wrote it. Probably didn’t think about it much.

Did I say “the Guardian’s commentary” just then? Silly of me, it isn’t a commentary. The nearest it comes to an effort at any of that “dig deeper, ask the tough questions” stuff reporters and analysts are meant to do is this:

Twenty-three people died in those bombings in Tel Aviv in January, including many poor foreign workers. Was it wrong?

The answer given, pretty quickly, is “Nah, ‘course not.” Note how McGreal had to drag in that fact that many of the victims weren’t Israelis in order to make even a debating-point case for sympathy. Beyond that one limp line there is no justification offered for the term “freedom fighter” or for calling Anne Gwynne’s activities “her own war against terrorism.” In contrast great detail is offered of the sufferings of the Palestinians (which is as it should be) – but not the slightest scepticism as to whether Anne Gwynne is telling the whole truth. Could McGreal not have made some interjection, asked a few challenging supplementary questions, for instance, when confronted with lines like this: “I used to think it was all excuses, but they [Israeli soldiers] actually believe this shit. We have nothing to kill them with, just a few AK-47s.”? Perhaps he was never going to give the answer I would have given, namely, “Your pals with the bomb-belts seem to slaughter well enough, dearie,” but one would think that the traditions of the Guardian would demand some note of distance, of qualification, of un-acceptance?

An apologia, even when desperately, heartbreakingly wrong, is a sort of bridge between evil and good, an acknowledgement that there is something here that needs explaining. But Chris McGreal saw no necessity for any elaboration. Tip-tap-tip went the swiftly typing fingers and out came the words “freedom fighter”, “her own war on terrorism”, praise as easy and insouciant as a local reporter putting in a good word for the latest charitable efforts of the Womens’ Institute or Rotary Club. As Stephen Pollard concludes, “Ms Gwynne’s evil views are not merely presented without criticism or proper questioning; they are endorsed. And that is, in its own way, also evil.”

[This post originally appeared on my own blog. I have also posted it here because of Blogger problems and to make it as widely known as possible what sort of attitudes the Guardian considers acceptable in its reporters.]

They set forth boldly into the world with love in the hearts and the zeal of righeousness in their eyes, blazing with their vision for a better world and a finer day when we would all join hands in common humanity. They were bright, shining, fearless emissaries of truth and justice, striding into the lion’s den as an example to the rest of mankind that there is a better way.

No bullet could graze them, no missile could dent them and no oil-grabbing cowboys were going to deflect them from saving the innocent Iraqis from their merciless predations of an unjust war!!

Only, now they’re coming home because…um..well, they got a bit frightened:

“Almost all of the first British “human shields” to go to Iraq were on their way home last night after deciding that their much-heralded task was now too dangerous.

Two red double-decker buses, which symbolised the hopes of anti-war activists when they arrived to a fanfare of publicity a fortnight ago, slipped quietly out of Baghdad on the long journey back to Britain.”

So that’s that. They’ve had some sun on their faces, seen the sights, tried all the local dishes and now it’s back to tedious old Britain where they can bore everyone with their holiday snaps (“Look, this is Tarquin and me draping ourselves over a Scud missile launcher”).

Next year: North Korea!

“It heightened fears among some peace activists that they could be stationed at non-civilian sites. Mr Meynell and fellow protesters who moved into the power station in south Baghdad last weekend were dismayed to find it stood immediately next to an army base and the strategically crucial main road south to Basra. Iraqi officials said there was little point in guarding what they considered to be low-risk targets.”

What, no baby-milk factories??!! They wuz tricked! They have been denied their rightful glory. ‘Peace tourist’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it.