Plagiarism at the Mail & Guardian?

CAMERA have been all over the recent Chris McGreal 15000 word feature in the Guardian (which was also featured on our local Mail & Guardian). They believe they have evidence that Chris McGreal plagiarised a part of his lengthy diatribe.

The following is a summary of some of the salient counterpoints made by CAMERA to the McGreal article. (The original two detailed critiques can be found here and here.)

Ninety-three percent (or even most) of the land in Israel, is allegedly reserved for Jews only, according to McGreal:* Israeli governments reserved 93% of the land - often expropriated from Arabs without compensation - for Jews through state ownership, the Jewish National Fund and the Israeli Lands Authority. In colonial and then apartheid South Africa, 87% of the land was reserved for whites. In fact, there is no such restriction. State land in Israel, more than 80% of the country's land, is equally available to all citizens. And while there are formal restrictions on land privately owned by the Jewish National Fund (13%), in practice that land too has been available to all Israeli citizens.

Israel has allegedly restricted the growth of Jerusalem's Arab population, enforcing a "demographic balance" in the city to the detriment of non-Jews: * At the heart of Israel's strategy is the policy adopted three decades ago of "maintaining the demographic balance" in Jerusalem. In 1972, the number of Jews in the west of the city outnumbered the Arabs in the east by nearly three to one. The government decreed that that equation should not be allowed to change, at least not in favour of the Arabs. In fact, contrary to McGreal, the demographic balance has changed "in favor of the Arabs" – Jerusalem, which in 1972 was 26.6 % Arab, is today 35.1 % Arab. These figures are easily available in online, official databases, had McGreal only bothered to check.

Muslims and Christians are allegedly barred from living in the so-called Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City: * Israeli law also restricts where non-Jews may live. "Muslims and Christians are barred from buying in the Jewish quarter of the old city on the grounds of "historic patterns of life of each community having its own quarter'," says Seidemann, in a phrase eerily reminiscent of apartheid's philosophy. "But that didn't prevent the Israeli government from aggressively pursuing activities to place Jews within the Muslim quarter. The attitude is: what's mine is exclusively mine, but what's yours is mixed if we happen to target it." Nonsense. The law doesn't say that. Muslims can and do live in the Jewish Quarter, and in substantial numbers, while relatively few Jews live in the Muslim Quarter. According to the most recent figures available online (from the 1995 /Census of Population and Housing/) at least 480 Muslims lived in the Jewish Quarter, making up 22.5% of the quarter's population, while just 380 Jews lived in the Muslim Quarter, making up only 1.68% of that quarter's population.

Israel allegedly denies building permits to non-Jewish residents of Jerusalem, forcing them to leave or build illegally:* ... [Palestinians are] denied permission to build new homes or expand existing ones, [so] many ... build anyway and risk a demolition order. Israel's former prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, routinely defends the demolitions by arguing that any civilised society enforces planning regulations. But Israel is the only western society to deny construction permits to people on the grounds of race. Until 1992, so did South Africa. Again, nonsense. Arabs in Jerusalem actually receive building permits at the same rate as Ultra-Orthodox Jews in the city (the two communities are demographically quite similar – in total population, family size and income). Indeed, in Jerusalem, Arabs have actually built new housing units at a faster rate than have Jews. And, as the chief Palestinian demography expert, Khalil Tufakji, admitted in a CNN interview, "We can build inside Jerusalem, legal, illegal -- rebuild a house, whatever, we can do. Maybe we lose ten houses, but in the end we build 40 more houses in East Jerusalem." (Sept. 19, 1998) In addition, a meticulously detailed report by Justus Weiner (/Illegal Construction in Jerusalem/ ) found, among other things, that: Both Arabs and Jews typically wait 4-6 weeks for permit approval, enjoy a similar rate of application approvals, and pay an identical fee ($3,600) for water and sewage hook-ups on the same size living unit.

Allegedly "influential Likud MP Uzi Cohen" also supported expelling Palestinians:* An influential Likud MP, Uzi Cohen, said Israel and its western allies should demand that a part of Jordan be carved off as a Palestinian state and that Arabs in the occupied territories should be given 20 years to "leave voluntarily". "In case they don't leave, plans would have to be drawn up to expel them by force," Cohen told Israel radio. "Many people support the idea but few are willing to speak about it publicly." Contrary to McGreal, there is no Knesset member, influential or not, named Uzi Cohen. Indeed, there has never been in Israel's history an MK named Uzi Cohen < http://www.knesset.gov.il/mk/eng/mkDetails_eng.asp?letter=C&view=0>. This is the one error in the series that the /Guardian/ has so far corrected

Regarding the above, McGreal's characterization of Uzi Cohen is likely much more than a mere error – it seems to have been plagiarized from an article by Khalid Amayreh, an open Hamas sympathizer and "journalist" based in Hebron. *Here's how Amayreh put it in /Al-Ahram/ < http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/672/re1.htm>: Influential Likud Knesset member and deputy mayor of the town of Ra'anana Uzi Cohen demanded a "radical approach" toward the conflict with the Palestinians. Cohen said during an interview with the Israeli state-run radio that "transferring" the Palestinians to Jordan was the only solution for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Cohen said that "many support the idea but few are willing to speak about it publicly." How is it that Amayreh and McGreal make exactly the same error, not just about Uzi Cohen being a member of the Knesset, but being an "influential" member, when he wasn't a member at all? Could it be that besides lying about Israel, McGreal also appropriates other journalists' work? In fact, McGreal "quoted" quite liberally from this article by Amayreh, and also from another published in al-Jazeera . Perhaps this would be an appropriate place to note that the /Guardian/'s Editorial Code expressly forbids plagiarism. (For a link to the code click < http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,643386,00.html> here.)

Israel allegedly prevented its Arab citizens from having political parties until the 1980's:* Arab Israelis have the vote, although they were prevented from forming their own political parties until the 1980s. In fact, Israeli Arabs were never prevented from forming their own political parties, and they did so long before the 1980's. As Professor Jacob Landau wrote in his book /The Arab Minority in Israel, 1967 – 1991, Political Aspects /: ... although no legal ban existed on the formation of Arab political parties and political groupings, it took a while until a second generation of Israeli citizens became aware of the significance of political organization and activity. In accord with this, in the 1977 elections, for example, the Arab-dominated Democratic Front for Peace and Equality won five Knesset seats, one more than they won in the 1973 elections. In addition, a number of smaller Arab parties ran unsuccessfully. Among these were the Arab Reform Movement, which received 5695 votes (about 9000 votes short of winning a Knesset seat) and Coexistence with Justice, which received over 1000 votes.

How shameful.

Send an email to the M&G ombudsman ([email protected]) and the editor ([email protected]) to protest the lies and distortions that went unchallenged in their newspaper. Ask if there will be an investigation into the apparent plagiarism that McGreal seems to be guilty of.

Comments

[nomvula]

i think the mail&guardian is one of the few south african papers who do exceptionally good coverarge of work! well written and investigated stories, that i as a borderenday journalist would feel proud to read or even contribute to. im a student at damelin, currently doing my second year in journalism... and would appretiate to hear from you!.

[mike]

Nomvula, I think the Mail and Guardian has a very strong Leftwing ideological bias. This unfortunately often translates into anti-Israel and anti-Western diatribes.

If balanced reporting forms part of the definition of good reporting, I would not give the M&G a passing grade.

[Steve]

I agree with Mike.

But I do also agree Nomvula that they do great coverage and most of local coverage is extremely well investigated and written.

I just think that their international stories fall victim to their editorial political slant.