UNRWA's Chris Gunness just tweeted two separate articles from the antisemitic hate site Mondoweiss. In both cases his tweets have a single purpose: to denigrate Jews.
Not Zionists - Jews.
The first one was this:
But the article, from JTA, was against the fringe of Jews who blamed Carter's cancer on his political positions. It quotes a leading Orthodox Rabbi in opposing such noxious views:
“Carter is not the only one dying from cancer. People in my own family were victims; pious and holy individuals I knew personally were targets of agonizing final ailments. But the Torah taught us not to dare make judgments based on equating someone’s suffering with sin and be guilty of the crime of the friends of Job.”The article concludes by mocking those Jews (and Christians) who make such claims:
One can only guess how those who believe Jimmy Carter’s cancer is divine retribution are explaining the 90-plus years he has lived in relatively good health, trotting around the globe, selling books and maintaining a position of great influence.Mondoweiss, of course, misrepresents the article by 180 degrees. JTA was exposing something ugly in a tiny outlier of the Jewish community and mocking it, and the Mondoweiss hate site pretended that JTA and JPost were supporting the ridiculous claims.
Gunness went further, and pretended that "leading newspaper" The Jerusalem Post - which he had called to boycott in the past - was reporting as news that Carter's cancer is retribution from God. The former BBC reporter didn't even bother reading the original source: he relied on hate site Mondoweiss to misrepresent the article. Anyone reading the Mondoweiss article would believe that Jews in general and Jewish publications hold these views.
This is antisemitism, pushed by Chris Gunness.
Gunness then apparently decided that Mondoweiss is the type of site that he can get all of his news from when looking for reasons to attack Jews. Again, not Zionist - Jews.
He dug up a Mondoweiss article that was over a year old:
What happened was this: The Times of Israel allowed bloggers to post pretty much whatever they wanted, without editorial oversight. One guy posted a highly offensive article saying that sometimes genocide is allowed under Jewish law. Both TOI and the 5 Towns Jewish Times, where it was also published, took down the article as soon as they realized what it said, and apologized for not overseeing the online publishing process better. They all agree that the article was noxious. even the author apologized within hours of the event.
Mondoweiss reprinted the article that practically all Jews including Orthodox Jews find reprehensible, with the explanation that it is "representative of part of the discourse in the American Jewish community" - in other words, purely to smear Jews.
Gunness decided today that this year old antisemitic slander is worth publicizing, because Gunness obviously believes that Jews are the problem and he, like his heroes at Mondoweiss, must shine a light on how ugly they are.
But Gunness goes further. Mondoweiss at least admits that the outlets removed the stories in very short order, and apologized. Gunness' tweets are meant to make his followers believe that these viewpoints - and every community has offensive fringe viewpoints - are widely held by religious Jews. And he is attackign the Times of Israel which acted quickly and responsibly to fix its flawed processes that allowed bloggers to post without editor oversight.
Why would Gunness bring this episode up now, stripped of context, if not to publicize his hate for Jews via Mondoweiss' bile?
Mondoweiss' antisemitism is clear. No less an anti-Zionist icon as MJ Rosenberg says it explicitly. it has been documented in The Atlantic. David Bernstein in a Washington Post Volokh Conspiracy blog gives many more examples.
And this hate site is now Chris Gunness' favorite place to link to, based on his last week of tweets.
In both these stories the Jewish community, including the Orthodox Jewish community, immediately responded forcefully against the odious views of a tiny minority.
In both these stories Chris Gunness of UNRWA twists the facts to make it appear that Jews are evil and that fringe viewpoints are mainstream.
This is antisemitism by any definition.
The online petition to investigate Gunness should go from 1000 signatures to 100,000 based on this explicit hate being promulgated not by Palestinian Arab employees of UNRWA but by a former BBC reporter who is UNRWA's public face. His hypocrisy is stunning and his hate is nauseating.
There is absolutely no excuse for a UN employee to act this way
Chris Gunness must be fired immediately.
UPDATE: Gunness deleted the tweets without apology.