Guardian Cowardice as it abandons Antony Loewenstein to Israel's Ministry of Information

Antony Loewenstein's profile on Guardian website which lists over a 100 articles he has written

The article below by Jonathan Cook, a freelance journalist who used to work for The Guardian is self-explanatory.  A journalist, Antony Loewenstein, who has contributed 90 articles to the Guardian over the past 3 years as a freelance journalist, had the temerity to ask a difficult question of Israel’s uber-racist politician Yair Lapid, the head of Yesh Atid.  Lapid masquerades as a Zionist centrist but he is virtually indistinguishable from Netanyahu. 

Antony Loewenstein - his crime was asking an uncomfortable question of Israeli MK and leader of Yesh Atid, Yair Lapid, a notorious racist opposed to 'mixed-race' i.e. Jewish-Arab liaisons

Loewenstein dared ask whether Israel’s treatment of the millions of Palestinians under military rule merited the accolade of it being an Apartheid state.   Nothing makes the defenders of ‘Israeli democracy’ bristle more than the word ‘Apartheid’ though quite how you describe a situation where 4 million Palestinians are held under military rule for nigh on 50 years at the very same time as Jewish settlers are subject to normal civil law, defies me.  Jimmy Carter, the former US President, was given similar treatment when he made this obvious comparison too.

HonestReporting is one of the many Israeli funded groups which dedicated themselves to combating unsympathetic coverage of Israeli and Zionist repression and racism

Either way a nasty little campaign has arisen, during which it has been falsely claimed that Loewenstein claimed to work for the Guardian as a permanent correspondent.  Loewenstein has been made the target of the so-called HonestReporting group, one of these Israeli funded groups whose main purpose in life is to intimidate journalists who are not singing from Israel’s hymn sheet.  When they contacted the Guardian to ask whether in fact Loewenstein works for them, rather than being told he is a freelance journalist who contributes copy, the Guardian distanced themselves from him. 

A cursory visit to Lowenstein’s profile on the Guardian website shows just how many articles he’s contributed in the past few.  The total is about 105. For the Guardian to now distance himself from the Israeli government and its Zionist chorus who wish to expel inconvenient journalists is despicable.

Tony Greenstein

Guardian newspaper fails to support colleague facing deportation threat from Israeli government

23 December 2016

Mondoweiss – 23 December 2016

Harriet Sherwood, former Guardian Israel correspondent, now their religious affairs correspondent.  Perhaps appropriate since her behaviour towards Loewenstein resembleds that of Judas towards Jesus

Israel is reported to be ready to expel an award-winning Australian journalist and writer, Antony Loewenstein, after he asked a too-probing question of an Israeli politician at a media event last week. Government officials have said they are investigating how they can deny him his work visa when it comes up for renewal in March.

It is unsurprising to learn that Israel has no serious regard for press freedom. But more depressing has been the lack of solidarity shown by journalistic colleagues, most especially the Guardian newspaper, for which he has regularly worked as a freelancer since 2013. Not only has the paper failed to offer him any support, but its management and staff reporters have hurried to distance themselves from him.

Sherwood on Twitter demonstrating that when it comes to solidarity with journalists under attack, the Guardian's journalists retreat by example

A deferential foreign press

Loewenstein has been under fire since he attended the event in Jerusalem, hosted by the Foreign Press Association (FPA), on December 12. According to the Israeli media, he asked former government minister Yair Lapid: “Is there not a deluded idea here that many Israeli politicians, including yourself, continue to believe that one can talk to the world about democracy, freedom and human rights while denying that to millions of Palestinians, and will there not come a time soon, in a year, five years, 10 years, when you and other politicians will be treated like South African politicians during Apartheid?”

Peter Beaumont - Guardian's Jerusalem correspondent in the normal act of solidarity one expects of Guardian journalists denied all knowledge of Loewenstein 

Israeli politicians are not used to hearing such difficult questions from members of the FPA, a professional association for journalists working in Israel. The reason for their deference to Israeli officials was explained to me a few years ago by an FPA insider. He revealed that not only are most of these correspondents Jewish – as Loewenstein himself is – but, unlike Loewenstein, they deeply identify with Israel. They live in Israel, not the occupied territories, they speak Hebrew, send their children to Israeli schools and expect them to serve in the Israeli army. Some of the reporters have served in the army themselves.

Perhaps most famously, former New York Times bureau chief Ethan Bronner was embarrassed in 2010 by the disclosure that he and the NYT had not divulged that his son was serving in the Israeli army while Bronner reported from the region. There was nothing exceptional about Bronner’s professional conflict of interest. My confidant told me: “I can think of a dozen foreign bureau chiefs, responsible for covering both Israel and the Palestinians, who have served in the Israeli army, and another dozen who like Bronner have kids in the Israeli army.”

He added: “The degree to which Bronner’s personal life, like that of most lead journalists here, is integrated into Israeli society, makes him an excellent candidate to cover Israeli political life, cultural shifts and intellectual life. The problem is that Bronner is also expected to be his paper’s lead voice on Palestinian political life, cultural shifts and intellectual life, all in a society he has almost no connection to, deep knowledge of or even the ability to directly communicate with.”

Most publications appear to believe that the benefits of employing openly partisan reporters – and all of them partisan towards the same party in the conflict – outweighs any potential damage to claims that they are neutral and impartial. The outlets hope their partisanship will offer them an advantage: gaining unfettered access to the corridors of power, whether in the Israeli government or army.

With this background in mind, it is possible to understand why Loewenstein described the tenor of the FPA event in the following terms: “With a few notable exceptions, the vast majority of journalists in attendance were deferential to Lapid and asked him bland questions.”

No support from the FPA

Loewenstein’s failure to follow the standard FPA rules of politesse when addressing an Israeli politician triggered a campaign against him by Honest Reporting. The group is one of several US-based media lobby organizations whose job is to intimidate foreign media organizations on behalf of the Israeli government. In this way, they have been successful in limiting critical coverage of Israel even further. Staff reporters tend to self-censor, while freelance journalists are pressured to leave the region.

In a transparent maneuver, Honest Reporting sought to paint Loewenstein as politically extreme for his past support for BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions), and as an activist rather than a journalist. That is no easy task. In addition to the Guardian, he has written for many leading publications in Europe, Australia and the US, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, the Nation, Le Monde diplomatique, the Huffington Post, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age, and many more.

He has also written several books covering a diverse range of topics, including his best-seller My Israel Question, in which he considers his own Jewish identity and relates it to issues of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. (Full disclosure: I contributed a chapter to a 2012 volume, After Zionism, he edited with Ahmed Moor.) He is currently working on a documentary based on his book Disaster Capitalism.

In other words, Loewenstein is not only a journalist; he is the gold-standard for serious independent, critical-thinking journalists. Which, of course, is precisely the reason Israel would want him gone.

Ignoring the deep, but entirely acceptable partisanship of the vast majority of reporters in Jerusalem, Honest Reporting has accused Loewenstein of partiality: “Loewenstein is clearly incapable of reporting on Israel in a fair and objective manner. Yet Honest Reporting has learned that he happens to be a paid up associate member of Israel’s Foreign Press Association.”

It is the traditional and self-defined responsibility of journalists to hold power to account, yet, sadly, the FPA has failed to come to Loewenstein’s defense. In response to Honest Reporting, it said it had accepted him as a non-voting associate member “based on his career as a freelance journalist”. But then added only: “While we do not endorse his views, we also do not screen our members for their opinions.”

So no words of support from the FPA for Loewenstein as he faces being stripped of the right to report from the region (and not just from Israel, as Honest Reporting dishonestly claims, but also from the occupied territories, since Israel controls all access to Palestinian areas). Not a word of condemnation of Israel from the FPA for crushing press freedom. Just a shrug of the shoulders.

Loewenstein should not be surprised. The FPA has barely bothered to raise its voice in solidarity with journalistic colleagues in the region whose rights are being trampled on a systematic basis. 

Palestinian journalists have been regularly killed, wounded, beaten up or jailed, earning Israel a ranking of 101 out of 180 countries this year in the Reporters without Borders index. That places it below Liberia, Bhutan, East Timor and Gabon, and a nudge ahead of Uganda, Kuwait, and Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Honest Reporting saw its chance to set a trap for Loewenstein to get him out of the region. More than a decade ago, Israel’s Government Press Office (GPO) introduced new rules that tightly controlled coverage in its favor. In a non-transparent procedure, independent journalists have to persuade the GPO that they deserve to be issued with a work visa.

In February, the Committee to Protect Journalists’ executive director, Robert Mahoney, criticised Israel for this patronage system. “It is virtually impossible to work as a reporter in Israel and the occupied territories without a press card,” he said. “The threat of withdrawing accreditation is a heavy handed approach at stifling unwelcome coverage.”

The Guardian distances itself

Honest Reporting has created a phony controversy about how Loewenstein received his work visa in a bid to discredit him. In fact, Loewenstein should easily meet the formal requirements for a freelance visa, as he has written far more than seven articles for major publications in the last year. But Honest Reporting is seeking to confect a row to justify the GPO refusing to renew his visa in March.

It did so by questioning the Guardian about his connection to the paper, hoping that it could get the paper to dissociate itself from him. Without a shred of evidence, it suggested that Loewenstein might have lied to the GPO, claiming he was a Guardian accredited journalist, to get his visa.

How did the Guardian respond? According to Honest Reporting, its head of international news, Jamie Wilson, told them that “Loewenstein was contracted to write comment pieces for Guardian Australia and remains an occasional comment contributor but he ‘is not a news correspondent for the Guardian in Israel’. It was also relayed to us that Loewenstein has now been told to in future make sure he does not reference The Guardian at press conferences unless he is working on a direct commission."

Further, their Jerusalem correspondent Peter Beaumont emailed the group to deny any knowledge of Loewenstein. And its former Jerusalem correspondent and now religious affairs reporter Harriet Sherwood entered the fray on Facebook: “Why is this guy claiming to be a Guardian writer when all I can find in our archive is occasional opinion pieces and nothing since August?” For the record, Loewenstein has written more than 90 articles for the Guardian since 2013.

One might wonder how it is that neither Beaumont nor Sherwood appear to have heard of Loewenstein when he has written several books on Israel and Palestine, and writes for their own paper and other leading publications on a range of issues, including Israel and Palestine. But then I suspect they may have a rather narrow range of reference points for their coverage – most of them doubtless FPA regulars.

But what is more significant is that none of the relevant actors at the Guardian has shown an ounce of solidarity with Loewenstein, as the Israeli lobby seeks to get him kicked out of the country for doing proper journalism. They have also inadvertently conspired with Honesty Reporting in misrepresenting him.

Despite Honest Reporting’s accusations, Loewenstein says he stated clearly in his GPO application that he was a freelance journalist. And it is simply inconceivable that he could have professed to be a Guardian reporter to the GPO without being found out. The GPO knows precisely who represents all the big media outlets in Jerusalem.

Further, according to a source at the FPA event, Loewenstein was clear about his status when he addressed Lapid. He said he was freelance journalist who had contributed to various publications including the Guardian.

Predictably, Honest Reporting’s managing editor, Simon Plosker, was delighted by the Guardian’s response: “The Guardian’s distancing itself from Loewenstein is a welcome development.”

So far the Guardian appears to have issued no criticism of Honest Reporting for its deceptions in this matter, or retracted its own misguided comments.

The Guardian — far from the fearless watchdog

Loewenstein may have hoped that the Guardian would stand by him. But my own early experiences in Israel with the paper suggest this is part of a pattern of cowardly behavior when it is under attack from Israeli officials or the Israel lobby.

I had an established relationship with the Guardian when I arrived in Israel as a freelancer early in the second intifada, in September 2001. I had previously worked on staff in its foreign department in London for several years. I used those contacts to begin pitching stories, and a few of the less controversial ones were commissioned by the paper.

It is standard journalistic practice when writing articles to give parties that come in for criticism a chance to respond. Therefore, in a piece on the Israeli army, I called the army spokesperson’s office for a comment. As is also standard practice, I introduced myself and cited where the piece would be published.

Less than an hour after the conversation, I was surprised to receive a furious phone call from the Guardian foreign desk in London. The Israeli army spokesperson had called the paper’s then-correspondent, Suzanne Goldenberg, to ask who I was and why I was writing for the paper. Goldenberg called the desk and threw a tantrum about my referring to the Guardian.

Then I had the most bizarre exchange in my journalistic career – and I have had a few. The foreign desk banned me from mentioning the Guardian in calls to any Israeli officials.

“But if I am commissioned by the Guardian to write a piece, like this one, and an official asks me who I am writing for, what am I supposed to say?” I asked incredulous.

I was told: “We don’t care – just don’t mention the Guardian. Things are difficult for us and Suzanne right now, and we don’t need you making more trouble for us.”

It was a revealing moment. Far from the fearless watchdog of popular imagination, the Guardian showed its true colors. It was petrified of actually doing its self-professed job of monitoring the centers of power. And the Guardian is one of the most critical publications on Israel. Imagine how much more feeble the rest are, if Guardian staff are so fearful of incurring the wrath of Israeli officials.

Time for the Guardian to step up

The Guardian now needs to make amends to Loewenstein, rather than allowing itself to be implicated in Israel’s ugly McCarthyism. It could stand in journalistic solidarity with him. It would not take much, just a simple act of journalistic courage and refusal to allow Israel to control who gets to report on the region.

The Guardian could do it by giving Loewenstein official accreditation. That would remove the GPO’s pretext for expelling him. It would not mean he was the paper’s Jerusalem correspondent. It would simply be a declaration by the paper that it believes in a free press and does not wants to see him silenced. Or is that too much to expect from the Guardian? 

Murder of Journaliss - The ‘Only Democracy in the Middle East’ Deliberately Targeted Palestinian Journalists

Mark Regev – the Goebbels of Israeli PR - justifies the murder of Palestinian journalists.  

Avital Leibovitch and Mark 'Goebbels' Regev.

Here is Mark Regev said, justifying Israel's bombing of Palestinian media buildings in Gaza:

“After a second Israeli attack on a media building in two days, this time killing two journalists, the spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister, Mark Regev explains to al-Jazeera English that because the journalists were Palestinian the Israel military considered them legitimate “targets.” Regev’s remarks were made just a few hours after the November 19, 2012 bombing of al-Shuruq Tower and another building used to house the offices of several media outlets, including both Palestinian and international networks.

Speaking to al-Jazeera, Regev said,

“We took out the target that we wanted to take out.” When pressed by al-Jazeera over the injuries of eight journalists the previous day, where one lost his leg, Regev continued:

    “Oh you’re talking about… oh first of all maybe we have a discussion about who is a journalist and if you’ll allow me I will elaborate on this. There is the al-Aqsa station, which is a station that is a Hamas command and control facility, just as in other totalitarian regimes; the media is used by the regime for command and control and also for security purposes. From our point of view that’s not a legitimate journalist.”

Palestinian journalists protest at Israeli military attacks

Al-Jazeera’s correspondent then followed-up by asking, “So what are you saying? That a local Arab journalist life is any less than an internationalist journalist?”Apparently for Regev, yes, in Gaza there are no legitimate Palestinian journalists, only targets.”

It is one of the best examples of the police state nature of Western ‘democracies’ today that their military and leaders need to physically prevent opinions they don’t like being broadcast.

It is no surprise therefore than its war on ‘Hamas’ (for which substitute the Palestinians of Gaza) Israel targeted and bombed buildings housing journalists in Gaza.  The justification of Israeli  PR ghoul, Mark Regev, is not surprising.

Israeli aircraft hit two Gaza media buildings on Sunday, wounding eight journalists

Hamas , for better or worse, is the elected government in Gaza.  It runs the administration.  To therefore say one targets Hamas is to say that one targets any form of Gazan administration. It is also of course a lie.  Hamas runs schools, roads, sewerage plants (presumably also harbouring terrorists since they are regularly bombed) and much else, besides organising resistance to Israeli attacks.

The purpose of the bombing was to return Gaza to the stone age.  Indeed this was exactly what Israel’s racist Interior and Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai, of the religious medieval Shas Party said when he urged the Israeli military "to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages" and destroy its infrastructure.

Journalists aren’t part of the medieval society that Yishai aspires to.  He has presided over the sending back of asylum seekers to their torturers in Eritrea, established concentration camps for refugees in the Negev and admitted just one asylum seeker in the past year.

It is little wonder that Yishai has been praised by the holocaust denying British National Party, who can only gaze in wonder and appreciation that a ‘Jewish’ state has elected such a racist monster to high office. BNP praises Israel minister on foreigners.  Even the Zionist rag, the Jewish Chronicle has had to admit to that (see bnp praises israel minister foreigners) Martin Bright and Anshel Pfeffer, November 5, 2009

Of course there are good precedents.  George Bush bombed the Al Jazeera offices in Kabul during the invasion of Afghanistan and discussed bombing Al Jazeera’s HQ in Quatar with Tony Blair. David Keogh, a civil servant at the Cabinet Office, and Leo O'Connor, a research assistant to former Labour MP Tony Clarke, (who disgracefully handed back the memo of a conversation between the two to Downing Street) was jailed under the Official Secrets Act 1989 for 6 and 3 months respectively, but not before the Daily Mirror had published the memo.

Palestinian journalists protest against Israeli attack on Gaza medi

It is an example of the attitude of Western leaders and war-makers to any version of the truth but their own.  In the above case, the BBC justified the Blair-Bush conversation as a ‘joke’, though as Andreas Whittam-Smith ex-editor of the Independent wrote, note-takers rarely record jokes.  Likewise the US attacked journalists in its savage attack on the Iraqi city of Fallujah.

Journalists demand UN probe into why Israel targeted them in Gaza

Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
The Electronic Intifada
Ramallah, 25 November 2012

Journalists in Hebron protest against deadly Israeli targeting of media in Gaza

(Mamoun Wazwaz / APA images)

RAMALLAH (IPS) - As people anxiously wait to see if the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas will hold, local and international human rights groups are calling for investigations into Israeli human rights abuses committed during its eight-day assault on the Gaza Strip, including flagrant attacks on journalists.

“We want an international investigation into what happened in Gaza,” Abdal Nasser Najjar, chairman of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, said. “We want to put an end to this [Israeli] policy of killing and injuring journalists. There is no difference between a journalist: Israeli, Palestinian, or international. We want to do our jobs only, as journalists.”

In its most recent assault on the Gaza Strip, which Israel called Operation Pillar of Defense, 162 Palestinians were killed and more than 1,100 injured. Three Palestinian journalists were killed and more than a dozen injured in targeted Israeli air strikes.

According to MADA, the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms, the Israeli army has killed 18 journalists, including two foreign journalists, in the past decade.

“They have classified journalists as enemies. They don’t want the world to know what they’re doing in Gaza, what the crimes of the Israeli soldiers are. I think they didn’t want the information to go from Gaza to outside,” Najjar, who is managing editor of the daily newspaper Al-Ayyam, said.

On 20 November, two Palestinian cameramen from al-Aqsa TV were killed instantly when an Israeli missile hit their car, which was reportedly marked with the letters “TV” in neon letters. The two journalists — Hussam Mohammed Salama, 30, and Mahmoud Ali al-Koumi, 29 — were on their way to al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City to document the admission of injured Palestinians.

The same day, a third journalist, Mohamed Abu Aisha, director of al-Quds Educational Radio, was killed when a missile hit his car.

“Deliberate”

Reporters Without Borders called the Israeli attacks “deliberate” and, in a statement released Wednesday, stated that “journalists are entitled to the same protection as civilians and should not be regarded as military targets.”

Almost a dozen reporters were also injured when Israeli air strikes hit buildings housing local and foreign media offices in Gaza City on three separate occasions. These buildings housed the offices of al-Arabiya, Agence France Presse, the Palestinian news agency Ma’an, and Russia Today, among others.

“We demand the United Nations set up a committee to carry out a full investigation into these attacks and take action against the Israeli government. Moreover, the international community must respond immediately to this heinous act,” Jim Boumelha, the president of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), said in a statement.

On 21 November, the Israeli military spokesperson’s office posted the following message on its official Twitter feed: “Warning to reporters in Gaza: stay away from Hamas operatives & facilities. Hamas, a terrorist group, will use you as human shields.”

The Israeli government also insinuated that since al-Aqsa TV — one of the media outlets targeted by the Israeli air strikes — is affiliated with Hamas, its employees are not real journalists.

“There is the al-Aqsa station, which is a station that is a Hamas command and control facility. Just as in other totalitarian regimes, the media is used by the regime for command and control and also for security purposes. From our point of view, that’s not a legitimate journalist,” said Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev in a heated televised interview on Al Jazeera. “We don’t target journalists. We target Hamas,” Regev said.

“Just a pretext”

According to Issam Younes, director of the Gaza-based Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, Israel’s questioning of Palestinian journalistic standards is only a pretext to justify its destructive attacks on the Gaza Strip.

“Imagine if Hamas said that those commentators on [Israeli news stations] Channel 2 and Channel 10 are [Israeli intelligence agency] Shabak people, then they are legitimate targets for Hamas to attack? It’s just a pretext,” Younes said.

Movement in and out of the Gaza Strip is almost entirely controlled by Israel; Egypt operates the southern Rafah border crossing. At the start of its latest military offensive, Israel allowed the entry of dozens of international journalists into Gaza.

This was a change from past Israeli policies. During its 2008-09 military operation in Gaza, known as Operation Cast Lead, Israel barred the entry of foreign journalists into Gaza, and declared the Israel-Gaza boundary, including a two-kilometer zone inside present-day Israel, and large areas inside Gaza as “closed military zones.”

It also used extreme violence against local journalists who were documenting the three-week Israeli assault from inside Gaza.

Al-Aqsa TV’s Gaza offices were completely destroyed during the offensive, resulting in a financial loss of approximately six million dollars, and the offices of the weekly newspaper al-Risala were also damaged.

“There aren’t any red lines anymore,” Younes said. “Everything might be a target, as long as there is this political cover and as long as [the Israelis] believe that they are immune, above the law, and can do whatever they want without being investigated.”

AFP Gaza office hit by Israeli strike, 3 Palestinian reporters killed in other attacks

One person was killed when Israel struck AFP’s Gaza bureau for the second time in two days. The IDF claimed the media buildings, which included the AFP bureau, were being used by Hamas to direct military operations, and were legitimate targets.

The IDF has targeted Gaza media buildings for three consecutive days as part of Israel’s ongoing ‘Pillar of Defense’ operation. On Tuesday, two Israeli strikes killed three Palestinian journalists. The building housing AFP was hit in another attack later, and no casualties were reported. A Wednesday attack on AFP’s building killed a two-year-old child.

"The child Abdul Rahman Majdi Naeem was martyred and another citizen was wounded in the targeting of the Naama building," Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qudra told AFP.

Mahmoud al-Koumi and Husam Salameh, camera operators for local TV station al-Aqsa, were killed in a car marked as a press vehicle near the al-Wihda towers in Gaza. Both journalists were 30 years old and had four children.

Two other al-Aqsa employees were wounded in the first strike. The second attack killed the director of al-Quds Educational Radio, Muhammad Abu Aisha, in his car.

A series of explosions followed by a widespread blackout were also reported near the Al Shorook building in Gaza, which houses several media outlets.

Later on, air strikes targeted two hotels in Gaza where reporters covering the Israeli assault were staying. No deaths were reported, but Press TV correspondent Akram al-Sattari was injured. Hugh Naylor of the National newspaper told Ma'an news agency said the blasts blew out windows in the Deira and Beach hotels.

Following Tuesday’s attacks, the IDF wrote on Twitter that its air forces “surgically targeted a Hamas operations center on the 7th floor of a media building in Gaza,” with a “direct hit confirmed.” The IDF also tweeted a warning to all journalists to stay away from Hamas facilities within Gaza territory, claiming that the group will use them as human shields.

The al-Qassam Brigades wrote back: “Warning to Israelis: Stay away from Israeli #IDF = #IOF, We just targeting Israeli soldiers, fighter jets, tanks and bases."

Israel's minister of incitement

Yishai has urged the IDF to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages, and destroy the enclave's infrastructure.

Haaretz Editorial    Nov.20, 2012       

The public debate on Operation Pillar of Defense has been slightly more restrained than during similar operations in the past, giving the impression that Israeli society has matured and moderated. Interior Minister Eli Yishai is the notorious exception. In the past few days he has missed no opportunity to rant, rave and rile people up.

Yishai has urged the Israel Defense Forces "to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages" and destroy the enclave's infrastructure. Yishai supports a sweeping ground offensive in the Strip.

Of all the ministers, the one whose party represents a dark, medieval culture is inciting us to send Gaza back to those very days. Many of his party's elected officials and voters don't serve in the IDF, yet their leader is exhorting the IDF to get entangled in Gaza, kill and be killed.

Yishai isn't the only one making radical proposals. Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz and other politicians have said unacceptable things. But Yishai is the most prominent - he's a deputy prime minister.

Yishai makes these statements solely to curry favor with his voters. He has always done so, inciting and instigating, sowing hatred and fear against the migrants from Africa, gay people and other minorities. Society should have sent Yishai packing long ago. The prime minister also bears responsibility - he should have reprimanded his deputy. Yishai speaks for the government and the state.

Since 1948 Gaza has been a disaster area. Poverty, population density and misery ruin its residents' lives. Many of them are refugees - add to that the Israeli occupation, the severance from the West Bank and the blockade.

Destroying Gaza's already meager civil infrastructure isn't only inhuman and a war crime, it doesn't do Israel any good. Israel has tried it more than once. It has demolished roads and bridges, destroyed power stations and water supplies and turned the lives of Gaza's 1.5 million people into hell.

As a result, Hamas has only grown stronger, the people's suffering has worsened and with it the hatred for Israel. Israel should seek the complete opposite: Gaza's prosperity. So anyone who wants to "send Gaza back to the Middle Ages" is a despicable politician and a bad adviser.