The Michael Rosen letter on Israel’s genocide that the Guardian/Observer doesn’t want to show you

Author’s response to appalling Jacobson article was ignored by paper

Michael Rosen, the Jewish author repeatedly and heavily targeted by supporters of Israel for standing against the ‘Labour antisemitism’ smear campaign and for the human rights of Palestinians, wrote to the Guardian/Observer. Not for the paper, as he has done before, but to them in response to an appalling article featured in the Observer written by Israel supporter Howard Jacobson.

In a deeply disgraceful comment piece, Jacobson had argued that covering the deaths of thousands of babies and children killed by Israel in its genocide in Gaza was the modern equivalent of the ancient antisemitic ‘blood libel’ in which Jews were accused of using the blood of children in their food or rituals. Rosen wrote to the paper to challenge Jacobson’s awful nonsense, but despite waiting for a prolonged period, it didn’t want to know. Rosen wrote that he had decided to publish the letter for himself because having:

thought I’d wait one more week to see if the Observer would print my reply to Howard Jacobson’s article. They didn’t.

So here is the ironic and (of course) beautifully clearly expressed response:

Dear Editor

Howard Jacobson writes, ‘I don’t accuse the BBC and other news outlets of wilfully stirring race-memory of the child-killing Jew of the middle ages’, and yet, he suggests, this is indeed what these news outlets are doing by showing those who are, in his words, the ‘innocent victims of war’.

Rich in suggestion as Jacobson’s article is, it’s short on suggestions as to what he thinks might be a way of solving this problem. Fortunately, the Israeli authorities have done all they can to help: they keep the world’s press photographers out of Gaza, but more work is needed. Surely, it should be to ban all images of dead and maimed Palestinian children, for only then can we western Jews be safe.

Yours
Michael Rosen

Israel has murdered tens of thousands of infants and children in Gaza, out of as many as two hundred thousand victims of the genocide so far.

For a full timeline of one of the most shameful smear campaigns against Michael Rosen and the tragic (for one author) and unfortunate (for the other two) outcomes, read this.

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