Inflammatory Matters

The TUC conference in Liverpool is to vote on yet another call to boycott Israel. As Sarah Jane put it on another thread “My opinion of Afghanistan is derived entirely from the news I receive about it.”
I suspect this also applies to members of the Fire Brigade union, Unite and Unison vis-à-vis the Middle East.
Today’s interview between James Naughtie and Israeli Deputy Ambassador Talya Lador-Fresher did little to enlighten the listener. The BBC’s theory that the settlements are the only obstacle to peace was put forward to justify the boycott using the “What else could they do?” argument, as in Cherie Blair’s empathetic defence of suicide bombers. Talya Lador-Fresher was only able to squeeze in, just at the end, a reference to the forgotten obligation, the other side of the requirement for peace- ‘some sort of gesture from the Arab world.’

The logic of boycotting Israel escapes me, but coming from people who are continually accusing Israel of collective punishment it is hypocritical in the extreme. Naughtie suggested boycotts are justifiable if you decide a government has failed, or “failed to convince people that its policy is reasonable.” (By that token we should be boycotting….never mind)
Whose fault is it that Israel has failed to convince people anything about its policies? For years the BBC has done its utmost to unconvince them.

A whitewash here, a smear there and half truths everywhere. It seems that the necessity to sustain cordial relations with oil-rich countries is reaching the the point of no return, and the BBC grooms us with its unrelenting campaign to sanitise Islam, vilify Israel, and erode the British identity in a seemingly unstoppable multi pronged onslaught.

Something slipped through the net on BBC World Service.

“Our reporter Mat Heywood has visited the site of a new biocluster that’s being built in Israel. This is a specially designed massive science park, where institutions like universities and hospitals stand alongside small start up companies and even investment banks. The idea is that they can then talk and do business with each other.”

A report so effusively admiring that you had to wonder how it escaped.

“Claire Skentelbery from the Council of European BioRegions joins us on the programme to explain why this set up is vital for the biotechnology industry.”

She was so enthusiastic about bioclusters in general it begged the question – whether, in the long term, Israel’s cutting edge science would not be even more valuable to this country than the Arab oil we’re bending over backwards to be allowed to acquire.

And if we don’t want Israel’s expertise, or if the brains in UK academia do plump for their academic boycotts, I’m sure plenty of other countries will be only too glad to take advantage. So go on Liverpool, boycott everything from Israel and shoot yourself in the foot.