'Gospel or Gossip' returns

In a recent post, Politically-incorrect Politics reported the case of Jeremy Moodey, CEO of a Christian charity with activities in the Middle East.  Writing in his CEO blog – published on the charity’s official website – Mr. Moodey accused the inhabitants of Shavei Shomron (an Israeli ‘settlement’ in the West Bank) of severely polluting “600 square kilometres of local Palestinian farming land”.  As Politically-incorrect Politics has shown, Mr. Moodey’s ‘source’ was an unverified accusation casually made by unidentified ‘Palestinian farmers’ (or, more likely, Palestinian activists acting as ‘guides’ to Western ‘useful idiots’).  However, even those ‘farmers’ only ‘estimated’ the alleged pollution as affecting 600 dunums, i.e. 0.6 square kilometres.  A EAPPI militant then conveyed the accusation in a blog post, in the process transforming the original ‘600 dunums’ unverified accusation into “around 600 dunumns [sic!] (square kilometres)”.  Mr. Moodey further distorted the report, by getting rid of the dunums altogether.  In effect, Mr. Moodey inflated the original (unverified) claim 1,000-fold and thus, publicly accused the Shavei Shomron community of polluting 600 square kilometres of land, i.e. an area equivalent to 11% of the entire West Bank, or approximately twice the size of the Isle of Wight.  Neither the EAPPI activist nor Mr. Moodey made any meaningful attempt to verify the veracity of the accusation; neither offered the accused community any opportunity to defend itself against that accusation, before trumpeting it to the entire world.

In comments he posted to a Politically-incorrect Politics blog on Times of Israel, Mr. Moodey has now admitted the facts above.

Under the oh-so-dreadful Israeli occupation,
poisoned by Jewish-generated 'pollution',
Palestinians are, clearly, 'disappearing'.

Honest people can sometimes make honest mistakes.  Yet Politically-incorrect Politics believes that in such case an honest person would apologise, publicly and prominently, for defaming an entire community.

Not Mr. Moodey, however: although forced to admit the distortion, he is totally unrepentant.  In his comment, he calls his 1,000-fold embellishment “one small arithmetical error” and blames it on the EAPPI militant.  Mr. Moodey hastened to correct his blog; strangely, however, rather than simply replacing the “600 square kilometres” fabrication with “0.6 square kilometres” (the original unverified accusation), Mr. Moodey resorts to yet another act of arithmetic contortionism: he now converts 0.6 square kilometres to “60 hectares”.  In other words, rather than making amends for the previous defamatory statement, he still does his utmost to embellish the (hearsay) allegation.  It seems to us that Mr. Moodey (an ex-bank executive) believes that his readers are so stupid, that they can be fooled using numeric artifices.  Politically-incorrect Politics hence suggests that he should perhaps try converting the area in question to square inch, or maybe even square millimetres.  This would certainly result in a much more ‘impressive’ number, thus further embellishing the ‘crime’ allegedly committed by those nasty Israelis!

An image from Jeremy Moodey's Facebook page

In addition to heading the charity, Mr. Moodey speaks on behalf of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), helping that organisation lure Christian audiences.  He is also a friend and collaborator of Rev. Stephen Sizer, who was recently accused of anti-Semitism.  Since Moodey claims that, in his relentless criticism of Israel (which has recently expanded to include the Board of Deputies of British Jews), he is animated by a yearning for justice, Politically-incorrect Politics finds it interesting to assess how that ‘justice’ works, in Mr. Moodey’s view.  One can learn this from the following passage, taken from his Times of Israel comment:

“We all make the odd mistake from time-to-time. But you seek to damn the whole blog, with its description of how West Bank settlers are polluting Palestinian farmland with their toxic waste water, by suggesting that this one small arithmetical error means that the whole article is 'slanderously conveying hearsay and gossip', yet you have not produced a shred of evidence to suggest that settlers are NOT polluting neighbouring farmland. If you can produce such evidence, I will happily put a blog on my website pointing my readers to it.”

It would appear that, when it comes to the Jewish State, Mr. Moodey’s ‘justice’ principle is “guilty unless proven innocent”.  The way it works is this: somebody (an unidentified individual or group, a fringe anti-Semitic website, a political activist, an NGO invaded by political activists, a political body or politician with an axe to grind, etc.)  makes an allegation – the more outlandish, the better (remember the accusation that Israeli medics aiding Haiti victims stole their organs?)  The accusation is then parroted by a cohort of Israel-haters, who embellish it further in the process; it then becomes Israel’s job to ‘produce evidence’ of its innocence.  What Mr. Moodey is saying sounds like: ‘there were reports that your sister is a whore – and you have produced no evidence to show that she is NOT’.  An interesting take on ‘justice’!

Incidentally, let us also note Mr. Moodey’s collective incrimination of “West Bank settlers”, who “are polluting Palestinian farmland with their toxic waste water”.  Assuming that ANY pollution has taken place (something Mr. Moodey seems to consider a priori true) – are they all guilty of that offense?  Is it possible that some of those ‘settlers’ – perhaps the vast majority of them – are innocent of that crime?  Collective guilt??  If someone were to say ‘See how Muslims in the UK are engaging in terrorism’, that someone would (rightly!) stand accused of racism.

All this does not come as a surprise.  In a recent blog, Politically-incorrect Politics has shed light on precisely such practices.  We wrote:

“And why bother to check the stories? After all – just like for that Stalinist judge – for these pursuers of ‘justice’ the verdict is predetermined; the ‘evidence’ is… well, whatever serves the purpose. In the ever-hostile eyes of Israel-bashers – be they ‘academic’ or ‘charitable’ – the Jewish state is guilty unless proven innocent. And how can it ever be innocent?”

If the diagnosis above needed to be proven once more, Mr. Moodey’s comments have just supplied that incontrovertible evidence.

Such ‘principles’ coming from the CEO of a Christian charity are – as an understatement – disappointing.  Politically-incorrect Politics officially boos Mr. Moodey.