Now, It's "The Independent" That's Full of Sh*t

A while ago, I blogged about Johann Hari of The Independent and claimed that he was "full of sh*t".

His claim there was that it was Jewish "settlements" that are responsible for the contaminating of the underground water of Judea and Samaria.

CAMERA counters:

CAMERA responded to her anecdotal defense by providing unequivocal data showing that the raw sewage problem in the West Bank was overwhelmingly of Palestinian origin. Confronted with these facts, Ms. Hayman fell back upon the primacy of The Independent's political narrative which holds Israel as an illegal occupier. In her final response to CAMERA, Ms. Hayman stated:

Johann Hari's column chose to focus on the untreated sewage emanating from the settlements he believes "there is a qualitiative difference between Israeli settlements, constructed illegally, pumping untreated sewage towards the occupied population, and a collapsing Palestinian Authority being unable to treat its own sewage partly because it exists under military occupation." A columnist – who is clearly flagged up to readers as writing an opinionated take on the news – is perfectly within his rights to do this. The facts he offered were accurate; his opinions and choice of emphasis are his own, as any reader can see, and as they should be for an op-ed writer.

According to her logic, only Israeli settlers deserve approbation for polluting the land since, in The Independent's opinion, the settlements are illegal. And Israel's military occupation absolves the Palestinian Authority of any responsibility to provide adequate sewage treatment. Despite the billions in aid provided by foreign donors, the Palestinian Authority has made limited investment in sanitation infrastructure. Nevertheless, the Independent condemns Jewish settlements alone for the problem.

There's much more there.

Ha-Ha Hari Harangues Israel

Huffington has Hari writing an anti-Israel piece here (sorry, it's from The Independent). It's entitled: The True Story Behind This War is Not the One Israel is Telling.

It start's like this:

The world isn't just watching the Israeli government commit a crime in Gaza; we are watching it self-harm. This morning, and tomorrow morning, and every morning until this punishment-beating ends, the young people of the Gaza Strip are going to be more filled with hate, and more determined to fight back, with stones or suicide-vests or rockets. Israel's leaders have convinced themselves the harder you beat the Palestinians, the softer they will become. But when this is over, the rage against Israelis will have hardened, and the same old compromises will still be waiting by the roadside of history, untended and unmade.

and ends like this:

Why would Israel act this way? The Israeli government wants peace, but only one imposed on its own terms, based on the acceptance of defeat by the Palestinians. It means they can keep the slabs of the West Bank on 'their' side of the wall. It means they keep the largest settlements, and control of the water supply. And it means a divided Palestine, with responsibility for Gaza hived off to Egypt, and the broken-up West Bank standing alone. Negotiations threaten this vision: they would require Israel to give up more than it wants to. But an imposed peace will be no peace at all: it will not stop the rockets or the rage. For real safety, Israel will have to talk to the people it is blockading and bombing today - and compromise with them.

I left his following comment there:

An article such as this does not lend itself to a rebuttal and even comments are difficult but let me pick one example of the author's insidiousness.

He writes: "...Yuval Diskin, the current head of the Israeli security services Shin Bet, "told the Israeli cabinet [on the 23rd] that Hamas is interested in continuing the truce, but wants to improve its terms." Diskin explained Hamas was requesting two things: an end to the blockade, and an Israeli ceasefire on the West Bank. The cabinet - high with election-fever, and eager to appear tough - rejected these terms."

The author, one assumes, would have accepted these "terms of improvement" and is critical, if not downright denigrating, of the cabinet which rejected the offer. But an end of the blockade would only have increased the Hamas ability to obtain more dangerous weapons and other war materiel, as they have been doing with the blockade in place (the bombing, though, of a good percentage of the tunnels might hamper any future underground smuggling of such). A ceasefire in Judea and Samaria would surely permit not only Fatah terrorists and those of the Islamic Jihad to strengthen themselves, to the point when they, too, would be able to rain down Qassams, Grads and whatnot on other Israeli residential civilian areas, but allow Hamas eventually to assume power as they did in Gaza.

But a fool would be criticial of such an Israel government decision such as the one the author opposes.

Hari Is Full of Sh*t

Sorry to return to Johann Hari, after just yesterday bashing him about a bit.

But I in reading the below story, I immediately recalled an earlier insult he launched against Israel. But first thing first.

Here's the news:-

Report: Palestinian effluent endangers underground water reservoirs

Report by Environmental Protection Ministry, Civil Administration, Israeli National Parks Service finds most West Bank streams contaminated by wastewater. Lack of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation may lead to severe pollution of underground reservoirs, it warns...58 million cubic-meters of untreated effluent are being pumped into the streams in the West Bank...The problem, said sources in the NPS and the Civil Administration, is that politics seem to be overshadowing both sides' environmental needs, as the Palestinians see any such cooperation as a collaboration with their occupiers. So much so, in fact, that even the relatively simple solution of connecting Palestinians cities to auxiliary, rear-guard Israeli treatment pipelines, was deemed unacceptable.

It is also claimed that

only 70% of the Jewish communities east of the Green Line are connected to treatment facilities. Moreover, illegal outposts and unauthorized settlement expansions are not connected to any wastewater treatment centers and are pumping effluent into sewage pits.

although I know that the Civil Administration is quite careful about sewerage and has installed many treating unit. And, after all, the sewerage output is minimal from the small demographics involved.

And The Jerusalem Post item here.

Palestinian towns and cities produce an estimated 56 million cubic meters of
sewage per year, 94 percent of which isn't treated at all. Israeli settlements
produce an estimated 17.5 million cubic meters per year, 31.5% of which isn't
treated. Most Israeli sewage is treated either in Israel or in the West Bank,
although many settlements have not yet built proper facilities...

And now, let's recall Hari (here):

the state of Israel...has provided the one lonely spot in the Middle East where gay people are not hounded and hanged, and where women can approach equality...But...a remembered smell fills my nostrils. It is the smell of shit. Across the occupied West Bank, raw untreated sewage is pumped every day out of the Jewish settlements, along large metal pipes, straight onto Palestinian land. From there, it can enter the groundwater and the reservoirs, and become a poison.

Oh, my gosh! Could it be that it is Hari who is full of shit?

That only Jews are responsible?

But wouldn't that be akin to antisemitism, blaming Jews for the world's ills?

He Doesn't Know His Tuches From His Elbow

Unlike Jackson Diehl, Johann Hari (*)



has a different take on the peace process.

Like:

The window of opportunity for a two-state peace is closing. Before it jams shut, the Israelis need to hear the plea coming through the checkpoints. Divide the land. Divide it now. Divide it properly. Or we will all end up battling forever – over nothing but soil soaked in blood and cordite.

which is in A last chance for peace in Israel? over in The Independent UK yesterday.

Of course, he missed this incident of an acid attack on an Israeli soldier.

And then, as a true 'lover of Israel', he gets fuming of the Irgun:-

...Her [Tzipi Livni's] father was the Military Director of the Irgun, the underground Jewish militia that spent the 1930s and 40s targeting the British occupying forces and Arab civilians who were trying to prevent the creation of the state of Israel. Livni was brought up to revere their tales of blowing up marketplaces, cafés and hotels; she proudly defends them to this day.

How would Livni's parents have responded to mass punishment – blockades, checkpoints, bullets? Would they shrug and surrender? The leader of the Irgun, Menachem Begin, wrote that every British attempt to "break our backs... only made us stronger and more determined". The same is happening with Palestinian nationalists today. Stripped of a state, they are fighting for one – and every Israeli attack makes them more radical and enraged.

But does Livni see the parallel?

Let's review that.

Those targetted "Arab civilians who were trying to prevent the creation of the state of Israel" were killing innocent Jews anywhere and everywhere and especially civilians - in marketplaces, on buses, on back roads of kibbutzim, etc. In fact, more than trying to stop the creation of Israel, they preferred to kill Jews, like in Hebron where they actually were opposed to modern Zionism as a political movement and in Tzfat (Safed).

The British never negotiated with the Jews after the Mandate was in place but ordered them about and shut down the gates to the country and in the face of millions trying to get out of Europe. They unilaterally partitioned the country. Israel has been negotiating and offering and yielding constantly. There is no parallel in this comparison.

Hari doesn't know, as my grandmother used to say, "his tuches from his elbow."



------------

(*)

Johann Hari is a columnist for the Independent newspaper, and writes regularly for the gay magazine Attitude and the New Statesman.

Aged 28, he has already written his first book, God Save the Queen?, a critique of the monarchy, and written a play, Going Down in History, which won critical acclaim at the Edinburgh Festival.

In 2003 he was named Young Journalist of the Year by the Press Gazette awards. A Cambridge graduate, he was also the Times Student Journalist of the Year in 2000.

Now Who Is Full of Shit?

The blogosphere was abuzz about this op-ed this past week:

Whenever I try to mouth these words [of reassurance for Israel], a remembered smell fills my nostrils. It is the smell of shit.

Across the occupied West Bank, raw untreated sewage is pumped every day out of the Jewish settlements, along large metal pipes, straight onto Palestinian land. From there, it can enter the groundwater and the reservoirs, and become a poison.

Standing near one of these long, stinking brown-and-yellow rivers of waste recently, the local chief medical officer, Dr Bassam Said Nadi, explained to me: "Recently there were very heavy rains, and the shit started to flow into the reservoir that provides water for this whole area. I knew that if we didn't act, people would die. We had to alert everyone not to drink the water for over a week, and distribute bottles. We were lucky it was spotted. Next time..." He shook his head in fear. This is no freak: a 2004 report by Friends of the Earth found that only six per cent of Israeli settlements adequately treat their sewage.

Well, Herr Johann, who's in the shit now?

Gaza sewage pumped into the sea over past three months

Millions of liters of sewage have been released over the past three months into the Mediterranean Sea from the Gaza Strip, according to a new United Nations report.

According to the report, an estimated 50-60 million liters of waste have been pumped into the sea. This was done in an effort to prevent an overflow of sewage in residential areas.

The report prepared by Office of the Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) raises concerns that the untreated sewage is carrying Escherichia coli (e. coli) bacteria into the sea which may affect those swimming in its waters.

E. coli bacteria can cause infection in the urinary tract and the digestive system.

The authors of the report also wrote that in areas where the sewage is pumped into the sea, the color of the water is dark brown and a strong odor emanates.

Fishermen in Gaza bay claim the sewage has killed much of the fish in the area.

Officials in the Gaza Strip said there were also concerns that the pumping station in the Zeitun area would not be able to handle the sewage that had accumulated and the treatment pools would overflow.