Monthly Archives: August 2010

HuntWatch

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“Impartiality? Not, say the Tories, with Labour figures heading the regulators” Peter Preston writing in today’s Observer

“Paul Farrelly, the Labour MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme, had a Commons question for our new culture secretary last week. Would the rules governing impartial television news remain sacrosanct in coalition land? To which Jeremy Hunt could have said simply “Yes – I’ve no plans to change anything”. But in fact he went on for a rather fascinating couple of sentences. “We will take no lessons on impartiality from the opposition,” he said, somewhat brusquely. Then he added: “There are two people responsible for impartiality in British broadcasting – the head of Ofcom and the head of the BBC Trust. One is a former Labour councillor and the other is a former Labour special adviser.”


That’s actually the only interesting bit. He goes on to make snippy comments about Boris Johnson’s father for no apparent reason. But it shows that Jeremy Hunt has his eyes open at least.

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THE ANTI-ZIONIST NETWORK

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BBC interviews someone from  the self-loathing “Anti-Zionist Network” during an item “Are we too critical of Israel?” who suggests that we are too soft on Israel during the Sunday Morning programme. Susanne Reid very opinionated, evidently hostile to the Israeli position, with  liberal Jew Edwina Curry on to present soft-focus  opinion, Douglas Murray did his best. The programme was recorded here in Northern Ireland and bang on cue came the BBC- approved view that Israel and Hamas need to “sit around the table and talk it out” – just like what has happened here with the murderous IRA. It sickens me how the BBC passes off the appalling appeasement of terrorism that has taken place here as the template for all “conflict resolutions.” It is ONLY when Israel appeases Hamas that it can expect any decent coverage from the BBC.

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Self-Fulfilling Backlash

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So Shimon Peres has noticed that the English are antisemitic and pander to Muslim votes. The Telegraph has chosen to whip up a controversy by heading an article:
“Fury as Israel president claims English are ‘anti-semitic’ “
So who’s furious?

“senior MPs and Jewish leaders who said the 87-year-old president had “got it wrong”

So far it appears that these furious MPs consist of:

“James Clappison, the Conservative MP for Hertsmere and vice-chairman of Conservative Friends of Israel”

Since Mr Peres’s comment was ‘buried in an interview with the historian Professor Benny Morris of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev published last week in Tablet, a Jewish news website, ‘ could someone be trying to make a mountain out of a molehill?

“The wide-ranging interview covered Mr Peres’ role as one of Israel’s longest-serving political leaders – an MP for 48 years, twice prime minister, and holder of other ministerial posts over the decades. He is firmly on the Israeli Left. “

He could have just been taking the opportunity to use the very dryly comical quote:
“There is in England a saying that an anti-Semite is someone who hates the Jews more than is necessary” a saying that contains a bigger grain of truth and considerably more wit than “Gaza is a prison camp.”

Haaretz has a slightly different way of making a mountain out of this.
“ Peres sparks U.K backlash after labeling England anti-Semitic” the headline screams out, continuing:

“President Shimon Peres provoked a media backlash in the United Kingdom on Sunday”

So far, the media backlash consists of an article in the Telegraph. The BBC hasn’t reported it yet, but I expect it will.

Antisemitism in England? Or do we mean AntiZionism?
Connection with the BBC? Tenuous, but not as tenuous as all that.

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