Good to see the BBC’s Midde-East disinformation service exposed and watching the Beeboids forced into issuing apologies for the poor standard of reporting.
You recall all that hysteria the BBC spouted on March 7, following the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva massacre? The BBC showed a bulldozer demolishing a house, while correspondent Nick Miles told viewers: “Hours after the attack, Israeli bulldozers destroyed his family home” Just one problem. That’s right – the house was not demolished. Other broadcasters showed the east Jerusalem home intact and the family commemorating their son’s actions.
Just over a week later in a news item entitled “Israel jets strike northern Gaza” the BBC reported that Israel was deliberately targeting civilians in an operation targeting Qassam rocket launch sites in Gaza, and claiming that the United Nations secretary-general had described it as an attack on civilians. Following a complaint the BBC squirmed “We accept we should have made reference to what [Ban] said about Palestinian rocket attacks as well as to the ‘excessive use of force’ by Israel. We have amended the report, also removing the reference to Israeli ‘attacks on civilians.”
Just what is it that makes BBC reporters see the imaginary demolition of houses? Just what is it that makes the BBC fail to report condemnation of Palestinian terrorists? The answer appears to be an endemic desire to want to believe the worst about Israel and simultaneously portray the Palestinians as doe-eyed innocents. This is BIAS incarnate and in these two instances, the BBC has been forced into providing the balance and accuracy that was lamentably lacking.
Foreign-language BBC channels are generally assumed to be ways of extending British influence in strategic parts of the world, rather than diminishing it. We’re not alone in having them. The fact Iran has an English TV news service does not mean they’re cuddling up to us. It’s their attempt to influence us.
Hillhunt | 26.03.08 – 1:49 pm
Define “British influence”, something like this perhaps?
Iran doesn’t need to influence “us” – the BBC are doing it for them.
Report accuses BBC of supporting Iran
Galil:
Bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, that one.
So define “British influence”, please.
Galil:
I’ll save us both the trouble. Here’s the World Service’s account of its mission:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/us/annual_review/2004/index.shtml
Short version: “to be the world’s best-known and most-respected voice in international broadcasting, thereby bringing benefit to Britain”
I just know you’re bound to agree.
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“… to be the world’s best-known and most-respected voice in international broadcasting, thereby bringing benefit to Britain”
Something seems to have gone wrong then.
Galil:
Tried to get odds on you saying that, but no-one would bet against it.
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Hillhunt–
The fact that you bring “kosher slaughter” into this, as if it were somehow magnanimous and “tolerant” of Britain to “allow” it, (implying that yes, there may very well be something “questionable” about it, despite the fact that it’s been part of British Jewish society for 350 years and has led to no known “radicalization”) is just astonishing, and an example of how absurdly far to the left British society has swung relative to the US.
Report accuses BBC of supporting Iran
Galil | 26.03.08 – 2:46 pm
Interesting. I often wondered why Asserson’s excellent site was dormant for so long. Good to see that he’s back on attack mode again against the subversive BBC.
simon:
Give over. I called kosher slaughter – and the recognition of Catholic conscience and Islamic banking – hallmarks of a tolerant society. Sue had queried concessions made to Muslims; I was pointing out that it’s something that happens across the faiths. Could well have mentioned the Sikh exemptions from headgear rules, too.
I fear that tolerant is another of those words which people like to load with political meaning. I like tolerance – other people are suspicious of it.
I am sorry for them.
just astonishing, and an example of how absurdly far to the left British society has swung relative to the US.
No. What’s astonishing is your hypersensitivity. Are you suggesting that there’s something equally questionable about Catholic doctors opting out of abortion, or Sikhs getting a pass on wearing a turban?
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Bryan,
The report is out now, link to it here:
http://backspin.typepad.com/backspin/2008/03/the-bbc-goes-na.html
Trevor Asserson’s newest report (pdf format) is an analysis of BBC Arabic’s radio programming. The report points out various examples of Israel’s demonization, dangerous and absurd comments, plus hostility to the USA and generally providing a respectable platform for terror organizations.
“The BBC Arabic radio appears to be out of control . . . .
The relative lack of Arabic speakers amongst those who pay for the BBC means that the BBC does not benefit from the criticisms of the general listening public as it does for its English speaking programmes. The corrective influence which those complaints normally provide is necessarily absent.
Having rejected the Independent Panel’s reccomendation to appoint a “guiding hand” to monitor its own Middle East output, the BBC has no systems in place to know what its own journalists think. We are not aware of any systematic method it has for monitoring programme content. It seems that the BBC has less control of its Arabic programmes than of any others, because it appears that relatively few of its senior staff speak Arabic.”
Bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, that one.
Hillhunt | 26.03.08 – 2:52 pm
See for yourself.
Hillhunt,
Let me put this another way: Is it “tolerant” to allow people to go to whatever church service they wish to attend? To allow them to observe private religious rituals in their own way? Kosher slaughter is a private religious ritual that impinges on no one and that is not paid for by the taxpayer. It requires neither your tolerance, nor the “tolerance” of some fictional “host” country.
Same for the Bet Din, in any Western country. A “court” of arbitration in which those who use it mutually agree in advance to abide by the decision, with NO weight whatsoever in the legal system of the land, and no jurisdication (including, mostly in Israel, where Ottoman law and British common law are the law of the land, except in some aspects of family law, out of respect for ancient Muslim, Druse, Christian, Circassian and Jewish traditions which have been present there in some cases for thousands of years).
Would you praise England for its “tolerance” of allowing folks to go to church on Sunday? No, you’d expect it and wouldn’t think twice about it.
Now while faith schools are government subsidized in the UK, they are not in the US where such funding would violate strict constitutional separation of church and state.
The point made by posters on this blog is that there is a distinct difference between, say, certain groups demanding the government install footbaths in public universities at taxpayers’ expense, or demanding airport cab drivers be allowed to reject passengers with seeing-eye dogs for religious reasons, (both examples of which impinge upon the rights and finances of others) as an example of “tolerance” to group needs, and the so-called “tolerant” graciousness of allowing people to practice their own religious rituals in private in the way they see fit, at their own expense.
To compare the two is absurd, and to suggest that the “host” culture, whatever that is, is doing the “minority” cultures any favors by “allowing” them to practice their religion in private, at their own expense, is patronising at best and bigoted at worst.
Galil | 27.03.08 – 1:20 am | ,
Thanks for that. I’ll peruse it in a while.
….patronising at best and bigoted at worst.
simon | 27.03.08 – 5:53 am
Hillhunt, like John Reith, is both and more. Good points there, simon. Well argued and presented.
Simon:
Don’t be ridiculous. I didn’t use the word “host” (as in host country) and, rather like the absurd conservative debate you are abusing the word tolerant.
It is entirely fair to point to accommodations and exceptions which society makes so that minority religious communities may follow articles of faith, when one culture’s practices are the subject of complaint from another. Sue had objected to changes which allow Muslims to use financial institutions. I pointed out, fairly, examples of exceptions to allow Jews and Catholics to follow their consciences. Sikhs, too.
It’s slightly disingenuous, though, to describe kosher (or halal) slaughter as a private religious ritual that impinges on no one and that is not paid for by the taxpayer. There has been strong objection raised to it by animal welfare groups – including the Government’s own advisory panel – and it takes place on publicly-licenced premises.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/06/11/nmeat11.xml
I acknowledge that both Jewish and Islamic exponents say that their methods are designed to prevent suffering, too. The issue arises in this case, as it has over doctors’ freedom to refuse abortion, and Sikhs’ waiver on the wearing of helmets and uniform caps, when other communities object. Ditto Islamic finance.
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Hillhunt
“I like tolerance – other people are suspicious of it.”
That’s one thing we agree about. Yet you still see no difference between other religions and their ‘demands for leeway’ and Islam, the most intolerant creed on the planet.
I know you avoid Melanie P by dismissing her as mad, but have a look anyhow at her latest offering about Geert Wilders. http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/576161/not-with-a-bang.thtml#comments
Sue:
I acknowledge that there are many people like the bearded firebrand on your last video link who espouse an intolerant view of other communities up to and including blood-curdling threats against Jews.
Some of them live here, although their willingness to express such views in public is shrinking, thanks to the prosecution of the hapless Jihad Poetess and brave journalism like Undercover Mosque.
There are some fantastically intolerant Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and atheists out there, too. The recent history of the former Yugoslavia is not pretty for those who think it’s only Muslims capable of murderous ethnic hatred.
There is a big question here, raised to much derision by Reith some threads ago: How do you win the battle for the hearts and minds of the Muslim majority? Ignoring them, harrassing them or provoking them might feel emotionally satisfying. But it stands a very good chance of driving many more towards jihad.
The issue we’re debating is simpler. If law-abiding Muslims would like accommodation within the law to invest with a good conscience, slaughter animals by their creed or build places of worship, why should any of us object? If Jews, Sikhs, Catholics and others are free to follow their consciences on issues which don’t contradict the law, why not Muslims?
Mel is on better form on your linked piece. But she loses it right at the end when the apocalyptic side of her lets rip. Funny how such a bright woman can’t let go of the inner sixth-former.
Perhaps I’m not the one to talk, though.
Hillhunt | 27.03.08 – 4:20 pm
“How do you win the battle for the hearts and minds of the Muslim majority? Ignoring them, harrassing them or provoking them might feel emotionally satisfying. But it stands a very good chance of driving many more towards jihad.”
Giving in to them when their demands conflict so much with our own principles is not the answer. You could almost analogise with giving in to a demanding child’s every whim in case he has a tantrum. It doesn’t do any good in the long run, although in the short run it might get you out of a spot of bother.
I don’t advocate a reactionary response either. We have got into serious trouble by allowing bad intolerant, demanding, unbending Islam to take hold while not presenting those open to influence with anything much better to aspire to. I blame popular culture pouring out of the media as much as anything else. Nothing worthwhile is given much of an airing or made to look worthwhile.
But your appeasing and denying strategy is never going to work while the enormous influence of zealots looms over everyone. If you refuse to recognise the danger of this, and stubbornly equate Islam with Judaism it makes you seem to myself and my ‘colleagues’ like a ‘soft’ antisemite, clinging to a persistent and almost deliberate lack of understanding of what you’re dealing with.
I have come across this attitude amongst the ‘politically aware’ so many times. If you pursue it you will always find that their knowledge of Jewish history, if any, is based only on the Arab narrative, largely myths and lies. In other words the narrative given to them over the years by the trusted BBC.
To you, the ‘Jew’ is ‘other’ and unless he is Anne Frank you don’t like him all that much, but will tolerate him magnanimously.
We are more like you than you realise, and you should bear that in mind when you lump together everyone you suspect is not ‘one of us.’
No more bending over backwards to accommodate Islam, it will never stop people turning to Jihad. All it will do is make us look vulnerable, gullible and worthless.
Falling off the page again.
And about the BBC Arabic stations, in case you haven’t followed other’s links, can you just dismiss Trevor Asserson’s report as another ‘he would say that wouldn’t he?’
Click to access Report_6.pdf
Sue:
Much of what you say is true. Except the bit about my being anti-semitic. That’s not true.
Where have we been giving in to them when their demands conflict so much with our own principles?
To complain about leeway for day-to-day cultural practices because there are jihadis in the same religion is self-defeating. If you deny people the same privileges as the rest of us – a place to worship; food prepared under their creed; a financial system which is honourable to them – you will inevitably increase alienation and the allure of zealotry. It’s not appeasement. It’s mutual self-respect. And self-preservation, too.
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Hillhunt said:
” If you deny people the same privileges as the rest of us – a place to worship; food prepared under their creed; a financial system which is honourable to them ”
So if it were honorable in contemporary Judaic law to permit the stoning of adulterers, would you argue Jews in Britain should not be denied the right to stone adulterers who are determined by that law to be guilty?
That is why, by the way, there is a clear talmudic injunction that is nearly 20 centuries old, since the expulsions under Rome, that for Jewish communities living in the diaspora, the “law of the land is the law.” Period. It is not trumped by Jewish law.
Moreover, this is precisely where the UK is getting itself into trouble, where the US is not, because of its separation clause.
When you say “if you deny people the same basic privileges” you are implying that the privileges ought to be paid for by the government–the building of places of worship, the preparation of dietary-specific food. This is, of course, where the UK is faltering. None of these things ought to be “privileges” paid for by taxpayers, but rather rights enjoyed by religious groups to engage in at their own expense. It ought to be the right of Muslims (and is) to build mosques wherever they can afford to buy land, to build their own schools with halal catered food as Jews do, and to conduct their religious ceremonies as they see fit. It is not a privilege. But with respect to the law, every religious and/or ethnic minority must subsume itself to the British common law, in the case of the UK, and western law in the case of Western countries.
Now, with regard to your comment about animal rights groups and kashrut–it is my understanding that there was a legal attempt in the UK to ban kosher slaughter on humanitarian (or should I say, animal rights) grounds which was defeated. The practice is banned in Switzerland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden.
It is inconceivable that after residing for 1000 years peacefully, and often at the mercy of their European neighbors, that this should be the case for the Jewish community in Europe today. That religious freedom should come under this kind of attack.
In the US, by contrast, PETA, a private organization dedicated to “animal rights”, complained about methods at a particular kosher slaughterhouse and the facility altered its practices to accomodate their concerns. There was no attempt to ban a private religious ritual which is not, in the US, either funded by the taxpayer or whose facilities are on government-leased property.
Jewish communities around the world are exemplars of accomodation to the will and law of the land, and have been for 20 centuries, so to ban or attempt to ban a religious ritual on one hand that costs no one a dime, while allowing re-hauls of the financial system to accomodate another group that will likely cost hundreds of millions, and to which deep changes in financial law will have to made to accomodate the re-haul, all for the sake of offering the “privilege” of being able to “bank” in the way one group finds “honorable”, strikes me as at least incredibly hypocritical, and at most an active double standard of behavior driven by fear more than by principle.
“If you deny people the same privileges as the rest of us – -”
“a place to worship; food prepared under their creed; a financial system which is honourable to them.”
Fine, if that’s all it was. But you and I know that it isn’t. If you don’t, then you must be feigning a ridiculous innocence or, as I’m beginning to I suspect, you don’t read anything we say. After all you seem to have taken on, single handedly, the whole rest of this blog. For some reason best known to yourself.
simon:
So if it were honorable in contemporary Judaic law to permit the stoning of adulterers, would you argue Jews in Britain should not be denied the right to stone adulterers who are determined by that law to be guilty?
Your Specsavers moment, alas….
Here’s what I wrote during the debate with Sue…
If Jews, Sikhs, Catholics and others are free to follow their consciences on issues which don’t contradict the law, why not Muslims?
That was….issues which don’t contradict the law…
In fact I said it several times above. So, er, no to the stoning of adulterers. Halal or kosher.
I’m not sure why gearing parts of the financial system to work in Islamic eyes is so problematic. London is a world centre for international finance. Why wouldn’t it find a way to work with the money in Arab hands? The world Islamic economy is said to generate over $500 bn. If the only strings attached are to avoid usury and take into account Koranic terms, why should that be a problem? It’s a reasonable assumption that the financial benefits will outweigh the cost, surely.
Sue:
“If you deny people the same privileges as the rest of us – -”
Fine, if that’s all it was. But you and I know that it isn’t.
Not sure that I do, no. Any community is within its rights to behave according to conscience. If that rubs up against the law, threatens public order or infringes the rights of others, society must weigh the benefits and drawbacks of accepting that behaviour. In my time in Lebanon, it was commonplace to see AK-47s fired in the air to celebrate events in some communities. Somehow I doubt whether we’d accept that here, no matter how nicely people asked.
The recent debate about the morality of kosher and halal slaughter was brought about by changes in the public attitude to animal suffering and advances in the non-religious way of putting animals to sleep before despatch. I can understand why that controversy may distress Simon, but such debates occur when decent moralities conflict, as they sometimes do.
you must be feigning a ridiculous innocence or, as I’m beginning to suspect, you don’t read anything we say.
Be fair. I’m breaking my own rules on brevity and sarkiness to answer with respect and in some detail. I don’t accept as right everything that you sincerely believe to be true. That sometimes happens no matter how well one reads one’s interlocutor.
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Hillhunt,
Sorry, don’t get the “Your specsavers moment” reference, not living on that side of the pond.
What might be an equivalent American adage to describe the degree of comic insult you are levelling ?
Kashrut yesterday, circumcision next, and soon some dumb British organization will be arguing that eating kosher is cruel to children because there’s too much salt in cholent.
simon:
Specsavers is a well-known discount store which sells spectacles. That would include reading glasses.
I was bemused that you hadn’t spotted my references to religious practices conforming with the law….so it was pointless to propose adulterer-stoning.
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Hillhunt | 28.03.08 – 2:29 am
Ha!
What?
Be fair. I’m breaking my own rules on writing in encrypted Japanese, underwater, substituting each letter with another at random, vertically. Just for you.
The Muslims don’t bend the law? Or have it stretched?
I thought polygamy was illegal, and multiple wives would not really be eligible for benefit. Are indigenous multiple wives allowed to claim? Thought not.
Same thing with ‘cultural practices’ such as forced marriage, suspected honour killings, prolonged absences from school, all treated sensitively to the extent of being given immunity by law enforcers and social services. Incitement to racial hatred and violence? Is that legal? Parading with banners reading ‘Prepare for the REAL holocaust” or “Butcher those who Mock Islam” or “Behead those who insult Islam” At a London Peace Rally?
Is it moral in your book to acquiesce when racist literature sells in bookshops affiliated to mosques or in Muslim areas? Is it O.K. with you that reproducing a stupid and feeble cartoon can be considered to be a bigger incitement than all these things? And sensitively treated?
You may like to see girls going to school in veils, and women wearing black all-over shrouds, peering through slits while going about their day to day lives.
You may be happy that rules can be broken about handwashing in hospitals battling with MRSA and C. Dif because of uncompromising attitudes to modesty. Or that so many immutable rituals that interfere with our way of life must take precedence over all else?
You can call it anti-Islamism if you like. It is not a phobia.
No. They impinge. Landmark 12,000 seater mosque dominating the Olympic site? Great Caliphate of Britain. Allah Almighty!
You were up late last night.
Sorry Hillhunt, I missed that post. My apologies.
Now Sue does have a point–what about polygamy?
It’s illegal in Canada too, but the law is not being enforced and now benefits are being given to families with multiple wives. Definitely an accomodation that stretches things.
Sue:
Sue:
You were up late last night
Returning from late engagement, but thanks for the concern.
Your list of accomodations is part-rumour, part-tabloid exaggeration, part fact.
Honour killings are pursued. The cops were slow off the mark on the last case, but murder is murder. Polygamy is not recognised in law; different thing to illegal. Benefits are decided on case by case basis. Dunno why they granted it; presume there are rules about marriages lawfully entered into before people arrive here – Catholic church sometimes breaks its own rules on priestly abstinence by allowing a converted vicar to keep his wife.
Incitement is a crime and some demonstrators have been charged. The WH Smith girl who wrote the stupid jihad poetry was convicted. The MRSA stuff was an individual act of daft piety and not supported by Muslim opinion.
I think women swathed in black are very sad, but then I have only sympathy for the kids in Stamford Hill growing up in their daft clobber. In my lifetime, widows in many European countries were expected to wear black and cover their hair. Why? F*ck knows, but culture decreed it.
In my cynical moments I wonder how anyone can take any religion seriously which thinks its God worries about fish on Fridays, masturbation, the way you slaughter a sheep or whether shellfish is satanic (it’s delicious). But people do. I respect that and don’t whinge because another lot have their own eye-popping system of dreads and duties.
If they’ve got the wherewithal, why can’t they have a mosque? In a land of ghastly shopping malls and miles of crap car dealerships and burger joints, a bit of exotic architecture makes me smile.
Not you, obviously.