Indy Media Watch

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Yet another antisemitic article with fabricated news (read: Lies) has appeared on UK Indymedia, been hidden and then unhidden by UK Indymedia moderators.

One can usually be suspicious of any article drawing comparison between Jews and Nazis. As such, the headline of the UK piece - Blitzkreig in Gaza stood out. A close examination revealed the suspicion to be correct. The poster has inserted fabricated text into a news report sourced from elsewhere. In a widely syndicated piece, one example appearing here were news reports of Israeli Defence Force activities around the Bet Hanoun Mosque.

Let's compare them.

The Indymedia article:

An Israeli army spokeswoman said that dozens of civilians had barricaded themselves in the mosque Thursday night to avoid being shot by Israeli forces who have been killing in the town since early Wednesday.

The original article:

Some 50 armed militants barricaded themselves in the Beit Hanoun mosque Thursday night to avoid arrest by Israeli forces who have been operating in the town since early Wednesday.

Armed militants become terrified civilians. Subtle isn't it?

The Indymedia article:

She said Israeli troops encircled the mosque and called for ‘hours and hours’ on the civilians to show themselves, threw smoke bombs inside and fired tear gas to pressure them to come out.

The troops also responded with ‘exact fire’ at other civilians who were going home,she said.

The original article:

Israeli troops encircled the mosque, called for 'hours and hours' on the militants to hand themselves over, threw smoke bombs inside and fired tear gas to pressure them to surrender, a military spokeswoman said.

The troops also responded with 'exact fire' at gunmen who shot at them from within the mosque, she told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. Witnesses said an army bulldozers tore down one of the mosque's walls, causing part of the ceiling to collapse.

A report of Israel firing at active gunmen, trying specifically not to hit civilians ('exact fire') is distorted by Indymedia to suggest Israel was specifically trying to hit civilians.

Needless to say, this bit was left right out of the Indymedia piece:

The Israeli military said Beit Hanoun's most senior militants were among those who took refuge in the mosque, some of whom were involved in rocket fire against Israel from the area.

'The very heart of why we are in Beit Hanoun is in that mosque,' the spokeswoman told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, charging the militant leaders had deliberately chosen a holy site to be immune from Israeli arrest.

'We are making every effort not to harm the mosque itself. However the object of the entire mission is to get the terrorists who are inside, to arrest them,' she said.

The military also accused Hamas of using women as 'human shields' by calling on them to take to the streets and help free the trapped gunmen, knowing Israeli troops would be reluctant to shoot at the escaping militants amid the crowd.

Cowards. It goes without saying that subsequent comments to the Indymedia post, indicating it is an antisemitic forgery were hidden.

So does UK Indymedia have a problem yet?

In the past, I have not posted comments on Indymedia referencing this site or promoted it on Indymedia in any way at all. Since this blog's inception, I have adopted a completely hands-off approach, waiting, perhaps naively for Indymedia to do some soul-searching, realize it has a problem and attempt to fix it. However, enough is enough and we are now way past that.

As this article, originally aimed at Jews, argues: Weakness fosters antisemitism. (Hat tip: GSF)

It is our understanding from comments in the previous post, that much of the discussion of antisemitism on Indymedia and on the admin mailing-list is censored or ignored, it's time to turn up the heat. The weakness must stop.

I suggest people append the following text as a signature to their comments and posts on UK Indymedia.

"Antisemitism is disgusting and totally unacceptable. As a Progressive Activist site, UK Indymedia must act responsibly. See: http://indymediawatch.blogspot.com/2006/11/more-antisemitism-on-uk-indymedia.html"

Keep comments civil and give moderators no genuine reason to hide them. If they subseqeuently do, hold them to account. A discussion of the problem of antisemitism can commence here, where it won't be censored by those directly guilty of it:

Let's be very clear about this:

Antisemitism is disgusting and totally unacceptable.

Update: The post has been hidden as has a copy which demonstrated the lies and contained excerpts of this post. Those comments were specifically hidden and not readily displayed to anyone trawling the Hidden Newswire.

So, they're hidden. For now... As a comment on this post notes:

Because of the publicity over the many anti Semitic popsts on Indymedia's UK site they have had to hide some of them but it is clever how the hide them, unhide them and hide them again. In addition they take a very long time to hide many offensive post of this kind but when posts on other subject as put up which don't follow the offical line these are hidden almost straight away.
I think what we are seeing is a policy shift, they know they can no longer get away with leaving up the anti Jewish stuff but they can leave it there for a while to allow it to be seen while hiding it after (on average 24 hours) so they can claim they are sticking to their own guidelines. Of course most posts are read in the first 24 hours so they still achieve their intent of allowing people to see them.
Clever, cruel but clever.

It is also instructive to note that comments on the Indymedia post were hidden almost immediately, so it is not the case that moderators were 'overworked' or hadn't 'gotten around to it' yet. Not hiding it thus far was a conscious decision. The problem continues.

A comment on a hidden post about Cuban political prisoners also makes an interesting point:

Would you hide this post if these people were in Israeli jails ?

So-called "progressive activists" picking their causes is not a new phenomena.