Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.
While I’m here, a little plug for my next post coming up in a few minutes. It’s about the BBC’s readiness to entertain a foolish anti-Israeli conspiracy theory about the Entebbe raid. My view is that, given that we have had thirty-plus years of Palestinian terrorism, I would really need rather a lot of evidence to take seriously the claim that what appeared to be Palestinian terrorism was actually a plot concocted in secret alliance with its apparent victims. Unlike the BBC who report this claim seriously ‘cos some guy said it.
I am equally sceptical and for the same reason of the claims made by some commenters below that Alan Johnston must have engineered his own kidnap because he apparently set out to meet his kidnappers. He was trying to get a story. That’s how Daniel Pearl was kidnapped, too. Palestinian/Islamist terrorists kidnapping people is not so rare an event as to require convoluted explanations.
And I’ve banned “the_camp_commandant” for nastiness on this subject unleavened by any trace of legitimate debate.