Just a quick alert to all B-BBC readers to have an onion handy when Abu Bowen presents the latest pro-Palestinian lovefest on the BBC. Tune in, if you dare, tomorrow night to Panorama to hear Bowen give a little pre-Israeli election onslaught on the reputation of Israel.
ONION TIME.
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David Preiser (USA) | 10.02.09 – 5:25 pm |
it’s (the bombing of the King David Hotel) generally used as a means to invalidate any argument from Israel supporters condemning Arab and Iranian terrorism.
David,
you’ve more experience of posting than I have and been at this longer, but can you cite any example on this blog where anyone has made that claim? I may have missed it.I can’t speak for what you’ve found on other blogs.
John | 10.02.09 – 8:00 pm | #
John,
With due respect, do you count canteen workers and secretaries killed in attacks on military targets in any other war? No, of course you don’t. Even the Geneva conventions don’t, because a military target is just that even if some civilians happen to be or even work there.
So I still say, get your definitions right. What defines terrorism is the target being civilian. A military target is a legitimate one at war, even though the composition of those present is necessarily mixed. This is always so, in any war.
The Israelis were fighting against Jihadi attacks, supported by the British authorities for their own political aims. The British were a fair target in this war.
If anything, the Israelis did not do enough, because for some reason most of them still believed that the British were basically decent. I would still like to think so, although their actions in Palestine were truly criminal. On the attitude to Israelis and Jews in present day Britain, I’d better say nothing.
.
John | 10.02.09 – 8:05 pm |
but can you cite any example on this blog where anyone has made that claim? I may have missed it.I can’t speak for what you’ve found on other blogs.
Start here.
Then go here, and scroll down to deegee’s response at 12:09am. The reply from “Anon” at 12:53pm is a classic example of the species. (Sorry, HaloScan doesn’t let me post too many links.)
Then have a look at this comment from Bryan a couple years back. He did a nice summing up of some discussions about the King David Hotel. What’s interesting is that he’s talking about comments from a BBC producer who used to participate here under the alias “John Reith”. JR in particular was often trying to get people to admit that it was an act of terrorism, and that we couldn’t complain of a double standard at the BBC if we didn’t want the KDH bombing to be classified as a terrorist act, but demanded it for Palestinian bombings of civilians.
If the comments here were searchable in a remotely useful way, I might be able to find other examples of people bringing up the King David Hotel as a way to discredit complaints about terrorism against Israel. This often involved long debates about how Israel got started, the borders, the Mandate, and on and on. Some people here might remember a few of them. I’m sure if you spent some time searching more recent archives you’d find even more.
Aside from just having no love for Israelis because they killed British soldiers back then (which is understandable from a certain perspective), or merely to remind everyone that Jews aren’t pure and noble all the time, what other reason is there to bring it up?
As for the world outside of this blog, forget about my own experience or opinion. Do a Google search for “terrorism king david hotel” and decide for yourself.
Re the Irish Potato famine. Surely a country, so backward, that its main diet consisted of potatoes should not be surprised when blight kills their crop and there is nothing to replace them so that there is bound to be a famine. The British are, of course always blamed but in fact we shipped in thousands of tons of grain though it was all too late and too little.
David Preiser (USA) | 10.02.09 – 10:13 pm,
Thanks for that. I recall being amazed at the vitriol of that particular attack by Reith. And that’s a great post from NiallKilmartin.
John | 10.02.09 – 8:05 pm,
The reference to “Zionist terrorists” is a tactic frequently used by the Israel bashers. Here’s a recent example from The Editors blog:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/profile?userid=13811557
Lefty rage at Thompson’s decision not to broadcast the DEC appeal for Gaza was soon directed at Israel.
Bryan,
Reith was never anti-Israel, full stop, like a few Beeboids we could mention, but he was very critical. He did seem to tick all the anti-Jew/Israel boxes, apparently common at the BBC: Israel was founded on terrorism and expelled millions of Arabs; the Jewish Lobby controls US foreign policy to the extent that they hold the purse strings on aid money to Egypt, who in turn keeps the Egyptian border with Gaza closed, hence the “Israeli siege”; anti-Israel criticism does not mean criticism against all Jews, but it’s still somehow perfectly understandable that violence against Jews happens when everybody condemns Israel; defending the need to bend over backwards to make sure a report respects Muslim sensibilities, but making no effort on a story about, for example, releasing Holocaust records, because using a Jewish presenter is enough; the blindness of that last bit about the Jewish presenter; all Jews are guilty of dual loyalty by definition, but somehow Mohammedans aren’t. I could go on.
But I think his eyes were opened a little once in a while. And as I say, he was never one of those who thinks Israel is a cancer, hell-bent on genocide of the Palestinians, controlling world wars, or any of that.
Anat (Israel) | 10.02.09 – 9:28 pm |
You make some good general points, however I would still maintain that the King David Hotel bombing was a terrorist act because the target was the civilian administration, and furthermore there was not a state of war. However I accept you see it differently, and I think we’re not going to agree on this. But I do appreciate your point of view. I hope you keep safe. I’m sorry you clearly don’t care for what seems to you to be British attitudes to Israelis and Jews. I’d say in my experience there is very little anti Jewish sentiment in Britain, but Palestine is seen as being the underdog compared to Israel.
David Preiser (USA) | 10.02.09 – 10:13 pm |
Thanks for the trouble you’ve taken with your reply. I appreciate that.
On deegee’s comments at 12:09, I’ve already referred to contention about what warnings were given. My opinion is that warnings were not ignored by the British. I do dispute that it was a military target, and I think the casualty figures make that clear.
With regard to Anon’s comments at 12:53. Anon says that “they [Israeli Jews] (rightly) abhor the use of terror tactics” so he/she clearly doesn’t condone terrorism and he makes clear that he doesn’t equate Jews with Islamic terrorists. I think when he/she writes “The kidnap of Israelis soldiers was an act against an “undisputed military target”” by putting “undisputed military target” in quotes they make it clear that they don’t condone that and see it as terrorism. I think he/she is wrong to lump all Jews together in any characterisation.
I think there are degrees of terror. I think you and I would agree that Islamic terrorist suicide terror bombers who have infiltrated wedding parties in Israel and religious festivals in Iraq to kill civilians is far worse terror with no justification even if it is born of frustration and desperation as well as indoctrination.
I don’t think we will agree on the King David hotel bombing.
As for ‘bringing this topic up’. My contribution was to respond to Anat’s claim that is was not a terrorist attack. He was replying to Geoffrey Sturdy who was replying to Anat’s claims about British actions under the Mandate.
Finally,
red pepper | Homepage | 11.02.09 – 9:21 am |
Surely a country, so backward, that its main diet consisted of potatoes …
At the time the “country” was the UK, and surely as the leading Imperial power of it’s day, and the workshop of the world, the UK could have prevented famine in it’s own land?
David Preiser (USA) | 11.02.09 – 2:40 pm
I think Reith’s negativity re Israel runs quite deep. He hinted once that he had family caught up in the King David attack. It seems likely that he is or was one of the BBC’s Middle East journalists. I tried on and off for some time to get him to respond to a highly anti-Israel programme by Alan Little about the Red Cross in Gaza. He claimed that Little was not anti-Israel, but would take it no further. And I recall that he was most indignant when confronted with the evidence of the faked attack on Red Cross ambulance in Lebanon, engineered to discredit Israel, and claimed that the Red Cross would never lie.
Be funny if Reith was Alan Little. (I have an idea we’ve had this conversation before, and decided that Reith could not be Jeremy Bowen.)
If the BBC has a few journalists reporting on the Middle East who were personally affected by the King David attack, that would explain one helluvah lot.
Bryan | 11.02.09 – 10:31 pm |
I’d forgotten about JR’s personal connection. I wouldn’t begrudge him that, but my problem lay in his beliefs about the Jewish Lobby, and his classic BBC bias on the border with Egypt. He nearly had me on that one with something about Israel partially obstructing the UN personnel from getting to the border, but just at that moment, the Palestinians themselves were publicly screaming at Egypt to open their border with Gaza. That was the end of that myth.
Reith never went so far as to declare Israel illegitimate. I don’t believe that was his game at all. However, he did use the KDH along with that incident of Israel taking out that Hezbollah controlled UN outpost (that was one of your debates with him, wasn’t it?) as a means to discredit Israel’s and their supporters’ complaints about terrorism, the use of the “T” word, concern for civilians, etc. He never got very far with it, though.
Aside from that, I always had the impression that he was more of a behind-the-scenes management/editor type, who eventually worked less and less at the BBC offices.
David Preiser (USA) | 12.02.09 – 6:10 am,
Yes, that debate was sparked by a comment I made on Paul Adams’ article expressing his contempt for Israel but masking with an alleged reaction by UN personnel to the shelling. I linked to the debate here:
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/patrickcrozier/7840330942630134089/#442771