Israeli propaganda group HonestReporting denies encouraging employee to smear UK professor

Asa Winstanley 6 January 2012

MediaCentral hosts racist Hebrew University Professor Raphael Israeli (seated).

My recent article exposing a smear by an Israeli pressure group worker seems to have touched a nerve. Israeli masters student Smadar Bakovic claimed in the Jewish Chronicle last month that Warwick University professor Nicola Pratt had given her a lower grade for her dissertation than she deserved because of anti-Israeli bias.

But Warwick university strongly denied her story, saying that the new higher mark given was in fact for a revised version of her dissertation. A university spokesperson told me that Bakovic’s story was untrue, and has subsequently issued a press release with further details.

The Jewish Chronicle’s reporter Marcus Dysch didn’t seem to think it relevant to mention that Bakovic works for MediaCentral  — a “free or low-cost” pro-Israel fixer agency in Jerusalem.

But now her employer has defended her actions.

Dishonest reporting

A few days after my story was published, the inappropriately-named “HonestReporting” (which MediaCentral is a project of) published a rather silly entry on their blog, attacking Electronic Intifada. It was written by managing editor Simon Plosker, a reservist soldier in the Israeli army press office.

Plosker seems not to have read my article properly. He focuses on the date Bakovic started her dissertation at Warwick:

Smadar’s struggle with Warwick University authorities began in April 2010 at her own instigation and with no connection whatsoever to MediaCentral.

The date she started her campaign to against Professor Pratt is not the point, and I never claimed it was. The fact she was a MediaCentral employee is what I reported and focused on, mainly because the Jewish Chronicle failed to even mention this basic fact. The problem with Marcus Dysch’s story is that it failed to mention Bakovic works for what is essentially a PR agency that aims to improve Israel’s image in the world.

“Nothing to do with it”

So I asked HonestReporting on Twitter if they had encouraged Bakovic to approach the Jewish Chronicle with her story. They denied it:

Marcus Dysch and the JC

This also calls into question the professionalism of Jewish Chronicle journalist Marcus Dysch. He’s entitled to promote a pro-Israel viewpoint, but that’s no excuse for dishonesty or (at best) poor journalism. The omission of such a salient point means he either didn’t do the five minutes of research it took to find out who Bakovic works for, or that he knew and covered it up.

Today, I asked Dysch on Twitter why he didn’t mention it, but he hasn’t replied (he’s unlikely to have seen this question, however, because he’s preemptively blocked me, despite the fact I’m pretty sure I’ve never Tweeted at him before).

If I had written an analogous story about a Palestinian student who was an employee of, say, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, without mentioning who he or she worked for, that would have been sloppy at best and dishonest at worst.

If Bakovic’s campaign against Professor Pratt has “no connection whatsoever” to her employer, as Plosker claims, why not simply say as much in the Jewish Chronicle article? Why did they wait till after Abraham Greenhouse and myself wrote about the case on Electronic Intifada to admit the fact?

Dysch’s reporting has also been called into question after he claimed in a second article that the agency which reviews the performance of universities in the UK “would conduct a preliminary investigation” into Pratt’s behavior. The Quality Assurance Agency soon denied this to the Times Higher Education magazine. They reported that: “no official complaint has yet been made and the QAA will require more details over the allegations before it could proceed with any investigation”.

Background

The press statement from Warwick University said an investigation launched after Bakovic’s April 2011 complaint had found Pratt’s supervision had been ” exemplary”, and said  “there was no evidence of unprofessional behaviour” as Bakovic had claimed . It said Bakovic’s assertion that a second dissertation which achieved a higher mark than the first had not been substantially different  from the original was simply not true.

Professor Pratt was one of many academic signatories to a letter in the Guardian during the 2008-09 Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, which asserted that “if we affirm the right to resist military aggression and colonial occupation, then we are obliged to take sides … against Israel, and with the people of Gaza and the West Bank” (“Growing outrage at the killing in Gaza,” 15 January 2009).

Who are MediaCentral and “HonestReporting”?

MediaCentral’s American-Israeli director Aryeh Green is an advisor to Israel’s former Deputy Prime Minister Natan Sharansky. After MediaCentral’s opening he wrote of its mission: “It’s time for Israel to use the carrot, rather than the stick, in our relations with the international media” (my emphasis).

In the video at the top of this blog entry, you can see Green welcoming Raphael Israeli — a racist Israeli professor — to speak at MediaCentral (he also says he studied with Israeli while doing his masters at Hebrew University). Israeli has extremely bigoted views on Muslims: “When the Muslim population gets to a critical mass you have problems. That is a general rule, so if it applies everywhere it applies in Australia” (The Sydney Morning Herald, 16 February 2007).

Managing editor of HonestReporting Simon Plosker is a soldier who does press work for the Israeli military as part of his reserve duty. From their site:

In Israel, Simon has worked for BICOM and as Managing Editor of NGO Monitor as well as serving in for a short period in the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit where he continues to perform reserve duty.

This fact alone makes a serious mockery of the group’s thin pretense to be just an neutral group that “monitors the news for bias, inaccuracy, or other breach of journalistic standards in coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict”. Indeed, this veneer is pretty half-hearted considering the fact the tag line underneath the group’s logo is “Defending Israel From Media Bias”.

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eGuard replied on

This is the timeline, constructed from the linked JC, University and HonRep posts.

2010, April 27: Bakovic submits email with complaint.
2010, September 1: Bakovic starts working for HonRep (so that is a bit over four months later, not five as Plosker writes).
2010, November: First mark for her first dissertation
2010, November, after the mark: second correspondence (an appeal) by Bakovic about the complaint.
2011, mid December ("last week" wrote JC on December 22): her second dissertation gets marked.
2011, December 22: in JC: "Bakovic: After a year of battling, I'm absolutely delighted".

So, her "year of battling" started in November 2010 (after her fist mark was given). That is when she made the appeal against the decision on her first and until then only email. That was some three months AFTER she started working for HonRep. We can also conclude that she wrote all of her second dissertation changes while working for HonRep. The University noted that, apart from the April 2010 complaint, they had not seen any other correspondence (or battling) about this before November. Simon Plosker HonRep writing that her "struggle" begun in April 2010 is not even supported by her own quote.

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eGuard replied on

(note: this page says "Bakovic’s April 2011 complaint". I think that should be April 2010, as the University press release says. The appeal was in November 2010).

Bakovic in a December 24 CiF Watch interview: "I then knew that I was dealing with a self-defined anti-Israel academic, who really calls to boycott Israeli academia, meaning Jewish Israeli academia, which makes her also an anti-Semite". Witch such logical capacities, the true question is why she did pass university at all.

The petition mentioned in this interview was initiated on Dec 22nd. First signer: Jonathan Hoffman.
#43: Smadar Barkovic, 23 Dec (and what about her ad hoc facebook page, linked to in the petition? Timing?).
#111: Simon "we had nothing to do with it" Plosker, already on Saturday 24 December.
#166: Adam Levick, Dec 24. He did the CiFwatch interview (published: Dec 24).

CiF Watch: http://cifwatch.com/2011/12/24...

Signatures: http://www.ipetitions.com/peti...

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eGuard replied on

Looks like they've shut down the petition. Asa, you want me to mail the screendumps with the 500+ names? (Can someone take a look & picture of her dedicated Facebook page?)

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Eugene Egan replied on

Keep up the good work. Without people like you, who challenge their false allegations, they'd have continued with their fabrications and distortions and get away with it!

Asa Winstanley's picture

Asa Winstanley replied on

eGuard, thanks for this research, pretty handy.

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eGuard replied on

So Bakovic is employed by MediaCentral, which is under the umbrella of HonRep. A response was given by Plosker on the HonRep's website (linked above). Plosker writes: "There is absolutely no connection between Bakovic’s academic issues and MediaCentral".

Why did not her immediate director respond? She is working there for 16 months, during which she also had to "battle" anti-Semitism in her UK University. Quite probably she had her interview with the director, somewhere before September 1, 2010 - when she was writing her (first) dissertation. Although she had written a complaint about Pratt (turned down essentially) her "battle" had not yet begun (until November 2010). What would one talk about in an interview?

Long time director at MedCent in Jerusalem is ARYEH GREEN. Publication 2008: "European Universities and the New Anti-Semitism: Issues, Examples, Prescriptions".

Promo about Green at JCPA institute: "Aryeh Green is director of MediaCentral, [...] He works [...] on issues related to young Jewish leadership, hasbara, and anti-Semitism, and [...] he coordinated a global effort to support Jewish university students and to defend Israel in academia. He has visited over seventy-five universities, and has spoken to and with thousands of university students and faculty members in Europe, US, Israel".

So, Bakovic's director has this specialisation in knowing Universities in Europe and US, working against anti-Semitism. And still, as Plosker writes, MedCent has no connection with her academic issues. In the interview her dissertation was not mentioned, her earlier complaint not, and then for over a year she "battled" with her English Uni - no connection. Even when her integrity is on the brink: silence. A lousy director you are, Green.

JCPA on Green: http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templ...
Publication: http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templ...

Asa Winstanley

Asa Winstanley's picture

Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist who lives in London. He is an associate editor of The Electronic Intifada and co-host of our podcast.

He is author of the bestselling book Weaponising Anti-Semitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn (OR Books, 2023).