Israel’s Fleet Street enemies

Tom Gross, NP:

We all know that journalists (including some at highly-regarded newspapers) often makes things up, but rarely have we witnessed such a mix of misinformation, disinformation and innuendo passed off as fact, as we have in recent days in the reports dealing with the death of Hamas terrorist Mahmoud Mabhouh. (Some of this admittedly can be attributed to the complete failure of the Israeli government – whether or not Israel had anything to do with the matter – to provide an effective response to the media.)

For example, the story in the (London) Sunday Telegraph that British immigrants to Israel had their passports removed and copied at passport control at Tel Aviv airport, is highly implausible. Passports are not taken from immigrants at Tel Aviv airport. This has never been the practice. I have checked with several recent immigrants and they have confirmed that this is not so.

The Telegraph story, written by a London-based correspondent, has all the signs of being planted by anti-Israel elements at the British Foreign Office (of which there are many – witness, for example, the reinstatement last year of Rowan Laxton, a high-ranking diplomat and “Middle East expert” at the British Foreign Office, even after a London court had found him guilty of racially aggravated harassment for saying “F**king Israelis, F**king Jews… they should be wiped off the face of the earth” in a crowded London gym).

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