Israel, Gaza And The
Termination Of Nafeez Ahmed’s Blog
IN July, regular
Guardian contributor Nafeez Ahmed examined claims that Israel is
seeking to create a 'political climate' conducive to the exploitation of Gaza's
considerable offshore gas reserves - 1.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas,
valued at $4 billion – which were discovered off the Gaza coast in 2000.
Ahmed quoted Israeli defence minister, Moshe Ya'alon, to the
effect that military efforts to 'uproot Hamas' were in part driven by Israel's
determination to prevent Palestinians developing their own energy resources.
Ahmed also cited Anais Antreasyan who argued, in the highly-respected
University of California's Journal of Palestine Studies, that this is part of a
wider strategy of: 'separating the Palestinians from their land and natural
resources in order to exploit them, and, as a consequence, blocking Palestinian
economic development. Despite all formal agreements to the contrary, Israel
continues to manage all the natural resources nominally under the jurisdiction
of the PA [Palestinian Authority], from land and water to maritime and
hydrocarbon resources.'
At the time of writing, Ahmed's July 9 piece has received a
massive 68,000 social media shares and is far and away the most popular
Guardian article on the Gaza conflict. In
the event, however, it was the last article published by him in the Guardian.
The following day, his valuable Earth Insight blog, covering environmental,
energy and economic crises, was killed off.
The Earth Insight series had accrued around three million
views and was the most popular Guardian environment blog. It published stories
which went viral, generating global headlines, such as Ahmed's interview with
ex-CIA official Robert Steele on the 'open source revolution' (44,000 Facebook
shares); the Pentagon's Minerva project and Ministry of Defence initiatives
targeting domestic activists and political dissidents (47,000 shares); and the
little-understood link between NSA mass surveillance and Pentagon planning for
the impact of climate, energy and economic shocks.
Ironically, given that the Guardian has just dumped him,
Ahmed recently won a 2015 Project Censored Award for Outstanding Investigative
Journalism for a Guardian article on Ukraine, published earlier this year. He
also won a 2014 Project Censored award for his first Guardian article,
published in 2013, which was about food riots as 'the new normal'. This year,
Ahmed was also included as one of the Evening Standard's 'Power 1000' most
globally influential Londoners, in the 'Campaigners: Ecowarriors' section.
Former Guardian and Observer journalist Jonathan Cook
comments:
'Ahmed is that rare breed of journalist who finds stories
everyone else either misses or chooses to overlook; he regularly joins up the
dots in a global system of corporate pillage. If the news business were really
driven by news rather than a corporate-friendly business agenda, publications
would be beating a path to his door.'
High praise indeed. At first sight, then, the Guardian's
ditching of Nafeez Ahmed is counter-intuitive, to say the least.
A 'Riled And Rushed' Response From The Guardian
Ahmed has now published the 'inside story' of how he 'was
censored by The Guardian'. As a regular and trusted online blogger since April
2013, he had approval to post his pieces direct to the Guardian website. Ahmed
describes what happened after he uploaded his Gaza piece in July:
'The day after posting it, I received a phone call from
James Randerson, assistant national news editor. He sounded riled and rushed.
Without beating around the bush, James told me point blank that my Guardian
blog was to be immediately discontinued. Not because my article was incorrect,
factually flawed, or outrageously defamatory. Not because I'd somehow breached
journalistic ethics, or violated my contract. No. The Gaza gas piece, he said,
was "not an environment story," and therefore was an
"inappropriate post" for the Guardian's environment website.'
Ahmed was 'shocked' and 'more than a little baffled' by this
'over-reaction'. Any concerns could surely be amicably resolved. But Randerson
'refused point blank, instead telling me that my "interests are
increasingly about issues that we don't think are a good fit for what we want
to see published on the environment site."'
This was curious indeed because the agreed remit with the
Guardian was for Ahmed's column to address 'the geopolitics of environmental,
energy and economic crises.' Indeed, when he had first applied to blog for the
newspaper, he had submitted a portfolio that included an earlier piece on the
link between Israeli military operations and Gaza's gas. However, Ahmed's
polite protests fell on deaf ears. Within an hour, he received an email from
the Guardian rights manager telling him that his contract had been terminated.
And yet, according to Ahmed, he had committed no breach of his contractual
obligations with the Guardian:
'On the contrary, The Guardian had breached its contractual
obligation to me regarding my freedom to determine the contents of my blog, simply
because it didn't like what I wrote. This is censorship.'
This 'grievous censorship' was all the more blatant given
the Guardian's publication of Ahmed's
June 2014 piece: 'Iraq blowback: Isis rise manufactured by insatiable oil
addiction - West's co-optation of Gulf states' jihadists created the neocon's
best friend: an Islamist Frankenstein.' Adam Vaughan, the editor of the
Guardian's environment website, had approved the piece, telling Ahmed, 'yes - I
think it's fine'.
As Ahmed notes ironically:
'So an article about ISIS and oil addiction is
"fine," but a piece about Israel, Gaza and conflict over gas
resources is not. Really? Are offshore gas resources not part of the
environment? Apparently, for The Guardian, not in Palestine, where Gaza's environment
has been bombed to smithereens by the IDF.'
Cook comments on the link between Israeli policy and Gaza's
resources:
'This story should be at the centre of the coverage of Gaza,
and of criticism of the west's interference, including by the UK's own war
criminal Tony Blair, who has conspired in the west's plot to deny the people of
Gaza their rightful bounty. But the Guardian, like other media, have ignored
the story.'
Cook is scathing about the reasons given by the Guardian for
Ahmed's dismissal:
'the idea that an environment blogger for the liberal media
should not be examining the connection between control over mineral resources,
which are deeply implicated in climate change, and wars, which lead to human
deaths and ecological degradation, is preposterous beyond belief.'
He concludes:
'It is not that Ahmed strayed too far from his environment
remit, it is that he strayed too much on to territory – that of the
Israel-Palestine conflict – that the Guardian rigorously reserves for a few
trusted reporters and commentators. Without knowing it, he went where only the
carefully vetted are allowed to tread.'
'Particularly Outrageous' But 'Not Entirely Unprecedented'
Ahmed went public about his dismissal on November 27. In the
following few days, nobody at the Guardian so much as mentioned it, with the
exception of a brief acknowledgement by columnist George Monbiot after being
prompted:
'I don't know anything about this, but will make enquiries.'
Responding to our tweet, former Guardian journalist Glenn
Greenwald commented:
'I know nothing about what happened, but he makes a very
compelling case - would like to see a @guardian response'
Monbiot has yet to comment further. We asked Seumas Milne,
another longstanding Guardian regular, if he would be responding to Ahmed's
claim of 'grievous censorship'. After several days, Milne replied: 'Yes, we have 95% union organisation at Guardian/Observer
(where I'm NUJ chair) & will follow up'
But despite repeated challenges from us and others, Owen
Jones, Richard Seymour and David Wearing - regarded as fiery, independent
contributors to the Guardian - have maintained a discreet public silence. As we
have previously observed in our books and in media alerts, this is as
predictable as it is understandable: it can indeed be career suicidal for a
journalist to be openly critical of his or her media employer (or would-be
employer). The best that one can hope for, apparently, is for these issues to
be discussed 'in confidence'. Sure enough, Ahmed was told privately by several
journalists 'inside and outside' the Guardian that his experience, 'although
particularly outrageous — was not entirely unprecedented.'
He added:
'A senior editor of a national British publication who has
written frequently for The Guardian's opinion section, told me that he was
aware that all coverage of the Israel-Palestine issue was "tightly
controlled" by Jonathan Freedland, the Guardian's executive editor for
opinion.'
In fact, several journalists have told Ahmed that Freedland
is, in effect, the paper's 'gatekeeper' on the Middle East conflict. It
certainly takes no deep reading of Freedland's own output to detect a strong
pro-Israel leaning. Jonathan Cook – who, as mentioned, used to work for the
Guardian, and is now an independent journalist based in Nazareth - knows this
only too well. He points to 'the Guardian's historic and current support for
the state of Israel', steered and maintained in large part by Freedland who
holds 'ugly, chauvinist opinions about Israel'. It was ironically appropriate
that Freedland should be one of the recipients of this year's Orwell Prize.
On December 4, after numerous people had read Ahmed's
article and prompted Freedland for a response, he told Ahmed that he had
nothing to do with the termination of his contract:
'I had no idea you wrote for the Guardian, no idea that
arrangement had been terminated and not the slightest knowledge of your piece
on Gaza's gas until a few hours ago. What's more, I was abroad - on vacation -
on the days in July you describe. To put it starkly, my involvement in your
case was precisely zero.'
Ahmed responded:
'Your reading of my Medium piece is incorrect. [...] I am
not implying your specific involvement in the termination of my contract - a
matter about which I have no knowledge thanks to the abrupt, unethical and
unlawful way in which I was dropped.'
Freedland's artfully crafted reply sidestepped the main
thrust of Ahmed's piece about Guardian censorship on Israel-Palestine, and
Freedland's significant role in this. Ahmed had spoken to: 'several journalists about my experience who told me that it
was not unprecedented, and mentioned you by name. According to these
journalists, [...] it is part of an entrenched, wider culture across the paper.
These journalists who spoke to me on condition of anonymity claim that you have
played a key role in fostering this culture, and that you have quashed
legitimate stories critical of Israel without meaningful journalistic
justification. I have merely relayed their allegations.'
By the end of last week, with the Guardian under mounting
public pressure - and perhaps even internally from some of its own journalists
- the paper's parent company issued a terse PR statement in a clear attempt at
damage limitation. As if pulled from the pages of Orwell's 1984, the Guardian
Media Group intoned:
'[Ahmed] has never been on the staff of the Guardian. His
Guardian blog - Earth Insight - was about the link between the environment and
geopolitics, but we took the decision to end the blog when a number of his
posts on a range of subjects strayed too far from this brief.'
No explanation was deemed necessary as to what constituted
'too far'. But then, as Noam Chomsky once said, there are limits to permissible
debate in even the most 'liberal' media: 'This far, and no further.' The
powerful pro-Israel lobby helps to keep British politics, including media
coverage, within these 'acceptable' bounds. In the absence of an informed
Guardian whistleblower emerging, we cannot know exactly why Ahmed's contract
was terminated so abruptly. But the paper's swift and drastic response to his
insightful piece on Israel's war for Gaza's gas is glaring and highly
significant.
It is to Nafeez Ahmed's credit that he has decided to speak
out about what happened to him at the Guardian. He could easily have kept
quiet, hoping that the paper might take him back, suitably chastened; or that
he might be picked up by another 'mainstream' newspaper. He comments:
'The Guardian breached the very editorial freedom the paper
was obligated to protect under my contract. I'm speaking out because I believe
it is in the public interest to know how a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper
which styles itself as the world's leading liberal voice, casually engaged in
an act of censorship to shut down coverage of issues that undermined Israel's
publicised rationale for going to war.'
If past experience is anything to go by, Ahmed will now be
deemed 'radioactive' by the Guardian, other 'mainstream' outlets and most
previously supportive corporate journalists. He will join the ranks of the
corporate untouchables, people who broke the first rule of corporate
journalism: Thou Shalt Not Criticise Thy Employer.
In similar vein, Giulio Sica worked at the Guardian as a
subeditor and occasional writer between 2007 and 2013, having spent time with
'antiwar and climate change demonstrations, with what I would describe as a
mixture of eco-spiritual and anarchist communities'. Sica assumed these interests would be welcome
at the Guardian. Alas, in October, he wrote:
'I found to my dismay... that in fact there seemed to be a
culture of open disdain at anything remotely radical or spiritual and, along
with some very dubious office politics, which I openly and forcefully contested
to no avail via official channels, I eventually had my contract terminated.'
The public are led to believe that 'comment is free' at a
Guardian steeped in 'liberal, humanistic and left, rather than right-wing,
values'. But Sica found that:
'discussions on controversial issues were not encouraged.
They seemed, in fact, to be passively discouraged. For example, any comment I
made even remotely critical of western mainstream media propaganda, whether
from myself or others, anything suggesting that the (then Labour) government's
economic policy was neoconservative, or any suggestion that Tony Blair should
be tried as a war criminal for his conduct in sending the UK to war on false
premises, would often result in either an abrupt put-down, or an awkward
silence, rather than open, welcoming dialogue. The political narrative in
office conversation seemed to be dominated by New Labour thinking.'
Instead, Sica perceived a drift to the right at the paper:
'But while the right has become more extreme in many ways
since the events of September 11, 2001, the Guardian and the liberal
establishment in general has appeared to veer to the right in its qualified
support for war and liberal intervention and its generally dismissive attitude
to what was known in the 1960s as countercultural thinking. As such it has been
unable, or unwilling, to mount a successful challenge to an increasingly
bigoted form of multicultural class war.'
His conclusion:
'The delusion of treating the Guardian as a leftwing liberal
news organisation, which has a multicultural and multidisciplinary make-up, has
to be challenged in the interests of creating a news medium that is a truly
balanced representation and reflection of British leftwing radical and liberal
viewpoints.'
In reality, the Guardian is part of 'an ethnic monoculture
that may believe itself to be liberal, but which bears all the hallmarks of
insular, upper middle-class thought'.
A Guardian Of Power:
The Guardian is, as we have often noted, at the liberal end
of the corporate media 'spectrum'. It portrays itself as a compassionate forum
for journalism willing to hold power to account, and it makes great play of its
journalistic freedom under the auspices of Scott Trust Limited (replacing the
Scott Trust in 2008). The paper, therefore, might not at first sight appear to
be a corporate institution. But the paper is owned by the Guardian Media Group
which is run by a high-powered Board comprising elite, well-connected people
from the worlds of banking, insurance, advertising, multinational consumer
goods companies, telecommunications, information technology giants, venture
investment firms, media, marketing services, the World Economic Forum, and
other sectors of big business, finance and industry. This is not a Board staffed
by radically nonconformist environmental, human rights and peace campaigners,
trade unionists, NHS campaigners, housing collectives; nor anyone else who
might threaten the status quo. As Ahmed observes:
'If this is the state of The Guardian, undoubtedly one of
the better newspapers, then clearly we have a serious problem with the media.
Ultimately, mainstream media remains under the undue influence of powerful
special interests, whether financial, corporate or ideological.'
He concludes, crucially:
'Given the scale of the converging crises we face in terms
of climate change, energy volatility, financial crisis, rampant inequality,
proliferating species extinctions, insane ocean acidification, food crisis,
foreign policy militarism, and the rise of the police-state — and given the
bankruptcy of much of the media in illuminating the real causes of these crises
and their potential solutions, we need new reliable and accountable sources of
news and information.'
Suggested Action
As a promising alternative to corporate media journalism,
Ahmed has announced plans for crowd-funded independent journalism. His initial
goal is to enable him to pursue investigative journalism on a full-time basis.
If this is successful, he then plans to take things to the next level: 'a new,
people-powered multimedia investigative journalism collective with its own
dedicated website, where I'll commission new investigations and hire amazing
journalists in my network.' You can support his new venture here.
This Alert is Archived here:
‘Grievous Censorship’ By The Guardian: Israel, Gaza And The
Termination Of Nafeez Ahmed’s Blog
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