![\"Nathan](\"https:\/\/fair.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Nathan-Robinson.png\")
Current Affairs<\/strong> editor and former Guardian US<\/strong> columnist Nathan Robinson<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n The Guardian<\/b> has fired one of its columnists for its US edition, Nathan Robinson, because Robinson jokingly tweeted about US military aid to Israel. The Guardian<\/b>\u2019s US editor-in-chief, John Mulholland, charged Robinson with spreading \u201cfake news.\u201d Worse, Mulholland suggested that his columnist was promoting antisemitic tropes about Israel\u2019s influence on the US government.<\/p>\n In a since-deleted tweet (12\/23\/20), Robinson had written, in response to the $500 million in military aid for Israel in the spending that included Covid relief:<\/p>\n Did you know that the US Congress is not actually allowed to authorize any new spending unless a portion of it is directed toward buying weapons for Israel? It\u2019s the law.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Lest anyone fail to recognize this as typical Twitter<\/b> sarcasm, Robinson immediately appended a clarification: “or if not actually the written law then so ingrained in political custom as to functionally be indistinguishable from law.\u201d<\/p>\n Later that day, Robinson received a note from Mulholland, whom he had never before heard from. (Robinson revealed his communication<\/a> with Mulholland and wrote about his firing in Current Affairs<\/b>\u20142\/10\/21<\/a>\u2014the socialist magazine Robinson edits.) Mulholland insisted that, “given that no such law exists,” the tweet was “fake news”\u2014”irrespective of the later tweet when you say that it is ‘indistinguishable from law.'” And he went on to link Robinson to antisemitic conspiracy theories:<\/p>\n Given the reckless talk over the past year\u2014and beyond\u2014of how mythical “Jewish groups\/alliances” yield power over all forms of public life, I am not clear how this is helpful to public discourse.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Guardian US<\/strong> editor John Mulholland<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n Mulholland also complained that Robinson’s remark on Twitter<\/b>\u2014a medium that limits its contributors to 280 characters at a time\u2014did not explore the question of aid to Israel more deeply, with a cross-national historical perspective:<\/p>\n I am not sure why singling out financial aid to Israel in a tweet and devoid of any context\u2014and without mention of aid to other countries either currently or historically\u2014is a useful addition to public discourse.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cIt dismays me that someone who presents themselves as a Guardian<\/b> columnist would make such a clearly erroneous statement without…any context\/justification,\u201d Mulholland concluded.<\/p>\n It’s not a particularly persuasive critique, but as Mulholland was his boss, Robinson deleted his tweet and promised to be more careful in the future. “I greatly appreciate your thoughtful response,” Mulholland replied\u2014but it was soon made clear that the Guardian<\/b> would be publishing no more of Robinson’s columns, and that the tweet, deleted or not, was the reason.<\/p>\n Robinson told FAIR that Mulholland was policing his conduct beyond his role as a columnist. \u201cIt is very clear that John Mulholland wants the ability not just to curate the content of the paper, but to curate the public thoughts of all writers affiliated with the paper,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Robinson joins the ranks of journalists and intellectuals who have been \u201ccanceled\u201d because of their criticism of Israel. Notable subjects include professor Marc Lamont Hill losing his job at CNN<\/b> (11\/30\/18<\/a>) and Steven Salaita having a job offer rescinded by the University of Illinois (Chicago Tribune<\/b>, 11\/12\/15<\/a>).<\/p>\n Beyond the flagrant abuse of the charge of antisemitism against any criticism of Israel (which in this case was actually a joke about US spending on Israeli arms), the incident raises a troubling question about the Guardian<\/b>. When high-speed internet access became more prevalent at the dawn of the new millennium, English-language outlets outside the United States became go-to sources for left-leaning readers frustrated by the pro-Israeli and pro-US bias in US Middle East coverage (FAIR.org<\/b>, 1\/1\/01<\/a>; 1\/28\/11<\/a>; 4\/19\/12<\/a>). The websites of the BBC<\/b>, the Guardian<\/b> and the Israeli newspaper Ha\u2019aretz<\/b> have, in recent decades, become important sources for broader coverage of Israel\/Palestine.<\/p>\n The Guardian<\/b>, like the Independent<\/b>, has been considered one of Britain\u2019s left-of-center publications, favored by Labour Party voters. The Guardian<\/b> formalized its US online edition 10 years ago (Guardian<\/b>, 9\/14\/11<\/a>).<\/p>\n The kind of thing the Guardian<\/strong> (2\/26\/13<\/a>) is not embarrassed to run, apparently.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n Of course, the Guardian<\/b>\u2019s storied anti-imperialism in the Middle East is sometimes rooted in more myth than fact: The paper (1\/18\/03<\/a>) championed US and British-led military action in Iraq and even gave John Bolton, a prominent hawk in both the Bush and Trump administrations, space to look back approvingly on the war (2\/26\/13<\/a>). The author page for former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who led the nation into the war and moved the Labour Party sharply rightward, has 75 articles<\/a>.<\/p>\n At the same time, pro-Israel outlets have accused the Guardian<\/b> of having an anti-Israel bias (Jewish Journal<\/b>, 12\/4\/03<\/a>; Algemeiner<\/b>, 7\/23\/20<\/a>). Pro-Israel media watchdogs like CAMERA<\/a> and Honest Reporting<\/a> have catalogued what they describe as a pro-Palestinian slant in both opinion and news coverage at the Guardian<\/b>.<\/p>\n Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, media officer for Britain’s Jewish Voice for Labour<\/a>, told FAIR that the group has seen a steady decline in the paper\u2019s Middle East coverage, most recently with what the group saw as a downplaying of the Israeli human rights group B\u2019Tselem\u2019s statement that Israel is, indeed, an apartheid state. \u00a0The Guardian<\/b>\u2019s editorial (1\/17\/21<\/a>) on the subject \u201cwas of the mealy-mouthed \u2018on the one hand on the other hand\u2019 variety,\u201d she said:<\/p>\n It was left to Middle East Eye<\/b> (1\/14\/21<\/a>), one of very few independent platforms in the UK with the courage to allow open expressions of a radical, anti-colonial perspective on Israel\/Palestine, to highlight the significance of B\u2019Tselem\u2019s work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n She pointed out that the Guardian<\/b>\u2019s opinion pieces \u201chave in recent years become virtually closed to advocates for Palestine,\u201d while pro-Israel \u201clobbyists seem to have free rein\u201d:<\/p>\n The choice in October 2016 of the Israeli Ambassador to author its commemoration of 80 years since the battle of Cable Street (Guardian<\/b>, 10\/6\/16<\/a>), comparing the threat of fascism in the 1930s with that of “left-wing antisemitism” now, was the last straw for me as a life-long Guardian<\/b> reader.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Wimborne-Idrissi argued that this trend mirrored the paper\u2019s negative slant against former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, as he fought accusations from the party\u2019s centrist faction that he allowed antisemitism to fester in the party:<\/p>\n Influential columnist Jonathan Freedland, executive editor for a time, has played a huge role in pushing forward the anti-Corbyn agenda. Editor-in-chief Katherine Viner, despite evidence of past pro-Palestinian sympathies, has done nothing to rein in attacks on the left, including on Jewish critics of Israel who have attempted in vain to generate discussion about the so-called IHRA definition of antisemitism<\/a>. The definition conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism, and is being aggressively deployed to close down expressions of support for Palestine.<\/p>\n Current political correspondent in the Westminster lobby team is Jessica Elgot, who joined the Guardian<\/b> in 2015, having cut her teeth at the Jewish Chronicle<\/b>, authoring many an attack on the Labour left under Corbyn. In her current role, she has continued her enthusiastic support for the smear campaign. A feature of her coverage has been to quote uncritically (Guardian<\/b>, 3\/8\/18<\/a>) from right-wing zealots with a clear anti-Palestinian\u2014some might say Islamophobic\u2014agenda, such as David Collier (understood to be part of the @gnasherjew collective<\/a> on Twitter<\/b>) and Joe Glasman of the misnamed Campaign Against Antisemitism. The latter caused consternation by responding to Corbyn\u2019s defeat in the 2019 general election with a video<\/a> celebrating how the CAA\u2019s \u201cspies and intel\u201d had \u201cslain the beast.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Declassified UK<\/strong> (9\/11\/19<\/a>): “The Guardian<\/strong>, Britain\u2019s leading liberal newspaper with a global reputation for independent and critical journalism, has been successfully targeted by security agencies to neutralize its adversarial reporting of the \u2018security state.\u2019”<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n A lengthy investigation by DeclassifiedUK<\/b> and the Daily Maverick<\/b> (9\/11\/19<\/a>) noted that after the Guardian<\/b> (6\/11\/13<\/a>) revealed Edward Snowden\u2019s leaks about National Security Agency surveillance, the paper\u2019s investigatory abilities in regard to state security operations became compromised. It said that at the time of the leaks, \u201cGuardian<\/b> editor Alan Rusbridger withstood intense pressure not to publish some of the Snowden revelations.\u201d However, in March 2015, \u201cthe situation changed when the Guardian<\/b> appointed<\/a> a new editor, Katharine Viner, who had less experience than Rusbridger of dealing with the security services.\u201d The investigation pointed out that Viner previously worked at the<\/p>\n fashion and entertainment magazine Cosmopolitan<\/b> and had no history in national security reporting. According to insiders, she showed much less leadership during the Snowden affair.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Justin Schlosberg, a senior lecturer in journalism and media at the University of London, echoes this in a chapter in a forthcoming<\/a> book about the paper: \u201cFollowing the aftermath of the Snowden revelations, the Guardian<\/b>\u2019s relationship with the security state began to look increasingly more cooperative than antagonistic,\u201d he wrote, adding that \u201cbetween 2016 and 2019, the paper was awarded three \u2018exclusives\u2019 with spy agency and counter-terror chiefs,\u201d which were \u201clargely devoid of the kind of interrogative scrutiny characteristic of the Rusbridger era.\u201d<\/p>\n At the same time, Schlosberg noted, the paper moved to the right during the years Corbyn led the Labour Party (2015\u201320). \u201cOn the whole, comment pieces were aggressively hostile towards the Corbyn leadership,\u201d Schlosberg wrote, and \u201cthe selection of issues and sources in news coverage overwhelmingly favored the accounts and agendas of Corbyn\u2019s detractors.\u201d<\/p>\n For some of the Guardian<\/b>\u2019s critics, this editorial switch can be felt today in much of its coverage and commentary of the Labour Party and in the Middle East. And that decline matters, because the Guardian<\/b> has long been seen as providing much needed nuance and broader reporting to the US newspaper market, and as a direly needed alternative to a British newspaper market that is dominated by nationalistic, Tory-aligned tabloids. Robinson\u2019s firing is just the latest example of what these critics have seen for a while. Of course the paper has published criticism of Israel, Robinson said, but he noted, \u201cIt has also shown that it is willing to cede ground to those who treat legitimate criticisms of the country’s policies as bigoted.”<\/p>\n FAIR published an open letter (2\/18\/21<\/a>) to the Guardian<\/strong>‘s John Mulholland calling on him to reinstate Nathan Robinson as a columnist. You can write to Mulholland at john.mulholland@theguardian.com<\/a>\u00a0 or via Twitter: @jnmulholland<\/a>. Remember that respectful communication is the most effective.<\/em><\/p>\n\n![\"John](\"https:\/\/images.currentaffairs.org\/2021\/02\/Screen-Shot-2021-02-09-at-3.25.33-PM-scaled.jpg\")
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\n<\/b>\u201cWhat this shows is that even <\/i>at the Guardian<\/b>, the editors want to very tightly police what writers say on Israel\/Palestine,\u201d Robinson told FAIR, adding that its editors \u201cwant to make sure the criticism is carefully approved and stays only within certain bounds.\u201d<\/p>\n
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