In Silwan

The Guardian's CiF at last features a piece on the horrific racism to be found in the Middle East:

It's searing hot, but there's some pleasantness about the stone-flagged path rising from the centre of Silwan, Jerusalem. Maybe it's the breeze, or the stone houses oozing coolness into the air, or maybe it's the wide-open mountain landscape. There are three of us – Ilan, the director, Michael, the cameraman and me, the interviewee. We're making a film on the blatant institutional discrimination against the residents of this Palestinian east-Jerusalem neighbourhood; authorities favour the Jewish settlers who are not hiding their desire to Judaise the neighbourhood, to void it of its Palestinian character.

Even before we position the camera, a group of orthodox Jewish girls, aged about eight to 10, come walking up the path in their ankle-long skirts, pretty, chattering, carefree. One of them slows down beside us, and pleasantly asks us if we want to film her. What would you like to tell us, we ask. I want to say that Jerusalem belongs to us Jews, she says as she walks on, only it's a pity there are Arabs here. The messiah will only come when there isn't a single Arab left here. She walks on, and her girlfriends giggle and rejoin her. [...]

Two minutes pass by, and an ultra-orthodox Jewish family comes striding up the path. The husband, all in black, asks Ilan: say, do both Jews and Arabs live in this neighbourhood? Both Palestinians and Jews, Ilan replies, but most residents are Palestinians. It's only temporary, the ultra-Orthodox man reassures him, pretty soon there won't be a single Arab left here.

I exchanged glances with Ilan and Michael. We've been here for less than 15 minutes, we haven't asked anyone on what they feel about Arabs or the future of Jerusalem, we only stood for a short while in the street. Hate flowed toward us like a river to the sea, freely, naturally. Do you think, I ask Ilan, that we'll run into someone who'll say something positive, something human, something kind about human beings? Forget human, Ilan replies, I wonder if we'll run into someone who'll be content to just say something nice about the clear Jerusalem air.

The point, of course, is not that this is a fabrication. I have no reason to doubt that this is an accurate account of what these film-makers found. The point is that this is appearing in the Guardian: a paper with a very poor record of balanced reporting on Israel and Palestine. I'm not an avid reader of CiF, but I don't recall many articles on the grotesque anti-semitism to be found across the Muslim Middle East documented by organisations such as MEMRI: Jews as apes and pigs, Holocaust denial, citing of the Protocols, and so on and on and on. If such attitudes were regulalry exposed by Guardian writers, then an article like this would be a welcome contribution to the debate. But they're not.

The piece appeared originally in Hebrew at the Israeli blog Haokets. That is, it was written by Israelis, living in a country with a free press, and taking advantage of that freedom to confront the intolerance and anti-Arab racism of many ultra-Orthodox Jews. We'll have a long wait to see anything comparable from within Arab or Iranian societies.

If you were an editor sitting on your arse in your office in London waiting for those exciting critical reports and exposés to come in, it's not hard to see how you might end up with a one-sided view: reports from the Arab world critical of Israel; reports from Israel critical of Israel....

Comments

[annie]

I highly doubt at least one part of the story - the part where a group of ultra Orthodox girls approach the crew and start chatting to them. This is so against the accepted "rules" of behaviour of the ultra Orthodox, especially of women, and doubly especially of girls, that it is almost certainly a fabrication. Even more so that they ask if the crew want to film them. The ultra Orthodox are notoriously camera shy. It all reeks of falsity. Which leads me to believe that the rest is equally false.

[Noga]

"We're making a film on the blatant institutional discrimination against the residents of this Palestinian east-Jerusalem neighbourhood; authorities favour the Jewish settlers who are not hiding their desire to Judaise the neighbourhood, to void it of its Palestinian character."

I doubt the film makers have much concern for the history of this place and what "institutional discrimination against the residents of this.. neighbourhood" really achieved:

"In 1882, a group of Jews arrived from Yemen, fleeing the persecution [11] there. Initially, they lived in tents. Later, when the rainy season began, they moved into the ancient burial caves on the east side of the valley.[12] In 1884, the Yemenites moved into new stone houses on the eastern slope of the Kidron, north of the Arab village, built for them by a charity called Ezrat Niddahim. This settlement was called Kfar Hashiloach or the Yemenite Village. Construction costs were kept low by using the Shiloach as a water source instead of digging cisterns. An 1891 photo shows the homes on an otherwise vacant stretch of hillside.[13] An early 20th century travel guide writes: In the “village of Silwan , east of Kidron … some of the fellah dwellings [are] old sepulchers hewn in the rocks. During late years a great extension of the village southward has sprung up, owing to the settlement here of a colony of poor Jews from Yemen, etc. many of whom have built homes on the steep hillside just above and east of Bir Eyyub,”[14]

The Yemenite Jews left Silwan during the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine and non-Jewish Arabs moved into the vacated buildings. After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Silwan was annexed by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.[15] It remained under the Jordanian rule until 1967, when Israel captured the Old City. Until then, the village had delegates in the Jerusalem City Council." (wiki)

[DaninVan]

And the beat goes on...
http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/45884734/critiques/new/Swedish_Blood_Libel_The_Aftermath.asp