The shambles hosted by Nicky Campbell that calls itself ‘The Big Questions’ plumbs new depths each time it graces the airwaves. Particularly when the subject is Israel/Palestine. How can people be so opinionated, so vocal and so sure of themselves yet so ignorant? Frantically launching themselves at subjects about which they know dangerously little, they interrupt hysterically, disrupt and misbehave in front of goodness knows who – why, we’re told that even the Queen sometimes watches what everyone calls, with great reverence and awe, ‘National Television.’
Who are they pandering to? Who do they think will admire these childish antics? Sadly, audiences do accept uncouth behaviour, even if they don’t particularly applaud it.
These bearbaiting programmes are simply ratings-chasers. Nothing, apart from hot air is ever achieved. Ray Cook deals with the idiocy of the question. “Is it Time to Free Palestine?” It’s completely senseless.
Nicky Campbell certainly knows more than he lets on. The genocidal content of the Hamas Charter for example. Nevertheless Hasan Nowarah avoids confirming the murderous intent immutably embedded therein, when Janey Godley, the Rab C Nesbitt-alike Scottish stand-up comedienne wonders if it is true. “Is it true?” she screeches, not listening for an answer. Hasan is setting sail on the forthcoming flotilla, to alleviate the plight of the starving Palestinians in Gaza, the largest prison on earth, by bringing them several boatloads of letters from sympathisers and Israel-bashers. Best of luck with that stupid publicity stunt.
Ms Godley is volatile and indignant. Whatever is or is not in the Hamas charter, she *knows* what she’s talking about. “For somebody who hates ghettos” she barks at Raymond Mann of Scottish Friends of Israel, “why did you create another one?” she shrieks, before smugly settling back into her chins. Denis MacEion advises her to Google the Hamas Charter. But you know – and I know – she won’t; and even if she does, she’d find some way of excusing or denying it.
Through the din Margo MacDonald can be heard announcing that Israel is an artificial state.
Sam Westrop is an impressive character. He’s part of the initiative ‘British Muslims for Israel.’ He wasn’t going to be ruffled by the heckling and jeering.
Peter Hitchens has a booming baritone which commands respect by dint of decibels. An air of expectancy descends whenever he opens his mouth. He knows you can get a good beef stroganoff in Gaza, but when the chunky keffeyeh-shrouded individual who had been yelling throughout because he’s palpably seething with hatred, is finally given the opportunity to tell the world that Gazans are starving, Hitchens barely challenges him. So we, the audience, which possibly includes Her Majesty, don’t forget, are left to ponder this misplaced emotional outburst for the rest of the day.
Because of the BBC’s misrepresentation of the Middle East, we must now expect to be confronted with this kind of outrageous hysteria, both on our screens, and in real life, and we’ll be encountering strangers with woefully prejudiced opinions for some time to come. Thanks BBC.
How can people be so opinionated, so vocal and so sure of themselves yet so ignorant?
I think you’ll find that you’ve answered your own question there, especially when it comes to such a complex issue.
Does anyone else think that the BBC’s mealymouthed ‘apology’ for getting the Jerusalem dog stoning story might be covering up institutional racism? http://notasheepmaybeagoat.blogspot.com/2011/06/bbc-still-not-quite-there-re-jerusalem.html
the bBC
“cheerleaders for a new holocaust”
and i’m deadly serious about that
Sue
That is a very profound letter from a Muslim.
I would not fancy his chances in most mosques.
http://cifwatch.com/2011/06/22/letter-from-a-muslim-zionist-to-margo-macdonald-on-her-accusation-that-israel-is-an-artificial-state/
Kasim Hafeez deserves utter respect
Sue,
May I say that your original post is superb.
You are right about Kasim Hafeez and any muslims who have the guts to speak out about these matters.
I have posted here before, but just to repeat, my wife is a black Gambian who was brought up a muslim and probably still considers herself to be one. She is not very devout, certainly not in marrying this atheist gentile, but many of my in-laws are devout muslims and have never been anything but kindness to me.
When I have discussed Jews with my in-laws, they do not accept the hostility of many muslims to Jews. Maybe, that is part of the traditional tolerance of all peoples, religions and tribes in the “Senegambia/Guinea-Bissau region” or, maybe, their personal view.
In the other 2 muslim countries I have lived in, Turkey and Malaysia, I have encountered many muslims who reject anti-semitism.
I have posted in the past on this, but just thought it was a good time to re-state it.
John,
Sorry, misread your post as Sue’s, but doesn’t change the content of mine !
Gaza, the largest prison on earth?
Gaza 139 sq mi
People’s Republic of China 3,704,427 sq mi
Heard Donnison today repeating this nonsense.
Im sure North Korea is slightly larger than Gaza.
Mailman
No there will NOT be another holocaust, however assiduousy the BBC campaigns for it. Why? Because we have Israel. And if these xxxxers attempt violence we will destroy them, or die in the act of defending ourselves. And we are very, very strong.
But I still cannot understand WHY the BBC is so hostile. Is it perhaps that Jews challenge their innate notion of their own superiority?
The military in Syria and Jordan have been humiliated more times than they would wish. All they are fit for is repressing their own peoples.
Meanwhile the Israeli military – especially the air force and the tank divisions – have time to train and practise for the attacks that may come from the failed states around them.
Sadly, there may have to be another war to prove the point. Lunatic politicos in surrounding states may well look for an attack on Israel to deflect criticism of their own failures.
I know who I would bet on, if war comes.
And it would be no good Iran pretending it was not part of it all.
But any future war on Israel will not be armed forces vs armed forces. It will start with a missile bombardment of Israel which will raise no more than tut-tuts from world governments. Israel will respond and immediately be censured for its disproportionate response. Anti-Israel United Nations resolutions will be passed. A no fly zone instituted over Gaza and West Bank; maybe border areas of Lebanon, Syria and Egypt. israel will refuse to recognise this no-fly zone and then what will the UN sanction? Or will Iran just declare that they must act against this ‘rogue state’, to protect fellow Muslims?
In my view Israel is more under threat in 2011 than it was in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973 or any time since.
Nota,
I agree with you about the threat, just hope you are wrong about the outcome.
The real risk is while the US has a weak President who probably won’t lift a finger if Israel comes under attack.
I’m less worried about Obama because he is already in election mode. Refusing to aid Israel would alienate most Jews and some Christians which would make his re-election and campaign financing more difficult if not impossible. It’s doubtful whether there would be any compensating movement of anti-Israel groups to his side. They are there already.
What worries me is the possibility that the UN September resolution will have unpredictable effects. One might be Arab state brinkmanship, using the resoltution as legal cover, such as Egypt moving troops into Sinai. Another might be various states refusing the use of ports and airspace to stop resupply. The would ‘equally’ stop supply to the Arabs who have other methods to move arms. Obama may not try too hard to find a way around this.
One thing I don’t expect is a No Fly Zone.No European country would risk men, treasure and the possibility of public insubordination in this effort and I expect the Arab effort would be no more convincing than the Arab League effort in Libya.
The only military capable of enforcing a no fly zone is the US and that is very unlikely. Europe? We wouldn’t last 5 minutes against the IAF. Russia has nothing to gain and Iran might make a gesture but I doubt it. Much more interested in removing the West from Iraq etc.
It is the very uselessness of Arab armies that probably makes the BBC/fellow travellers so strident and dangerous. They hope to achieve their aim of destroying Israel by deligitimising the state.
A delusion of course but the reality and the liberal left have long been strangers.
Keep in mind al beebs double standards and absolute hypocrisy!
The BBC went out of its way to point Israel as the aggressor during Cast Lead. Not once did we hear the unabashed truth of what had been going on around Gaza since 2005 without Israel being cast as the evil oppressor. The BBC moved heaven and earth to deligitimise Israels right to protect its citizens in Southern Israel from terrorist attacks and continues to do that today.
Now look at Libya. Even though the West had absolutely need to get involved in military actions…in spite of the fact that Libya hadnt attached any of the countries now bombarding it…in spite of the fact that NATO is killing civilians what do we get from al been?
Thats right, crickets and tumble weeds!
And we see the same thing happening throughout the Arab world up risings. Arabs are being murdered by their security forces YET not a peep from the BBC. Yet should Israel DARE to protect its citizens from very real terrorist attacks that happen EVERY SINGLE FUCKING DAY Al Beeb swings in to holy jihad mode against the Jewish state!
As Ive been saying for ever…Israel is held to a much higher level of conduct than any other nation on the face of this planet! The double standards and plain hypocrisy is disgusting! And the BBC plays an active and willing role in this double standard!
Mailman
Mailman,
It would be funny to make a complaint against the BBC accusing them of being anti-Arab racists because they only expect Arabs to behave worse than dogs !
Of course, we know the real reason.
Hymie,
The BBC’s institutional anti-semitism is a mystery to me. It can’t just be put down as Left-wingery as not all on the Left are anti-semitic. Maybe other posters can comment.
I hope you are right
The only prison in the world with a Mercedes dealership. Which Donnison knows all about.
Thanks for posting this.
Shocked to see that this was a BBC programme and not consigned to a bin on seeing the edits.
That Mac Eion is accused of “not knowing what he`s talking about” by some Glasgae harpie who was let loose in the room was abysmal.
At least
To see the likes of Hitchens reduced to having to beg to finish a sentence over that gobshite in the Palestinian scarf over the suit was equally awful. If Question Time is so sanitised, how come Campbell is so ineffective in this show…different standards of filtering or what?
Don`t think I`ve seen a clearer picture of the Hamas-Fatah machine in operation. Chilling and I for one am on alert now.
Hope Regev gets to see what we here have to put up with on a Sunday morning.
Thank God for Israel-even more so after watching this sinister limewash!
At least Raymond Mann got the last word-very unusual in Beebland to let the “enemy” close the debate…surprised our Hamas/Fatah double act let that pass!
It’s a mystery to me why Peter Hitchens keeps subjecting himself to this on the BBC. I don’t always agree with him but I admire him for going into the lion’s den so often.
“The LRA, the last remaining anti-government organization from the Uganda Civil War, continued to remain a threat to the region in 2010 by attacking remote locations and they continued to evade capture of the Ugandan military. The goals of the LRA had become increasingly unclear and they did not appear to pose a threat to the governments of any of the countries they operated in, preferring to prey on civilians, killing, raping, and mutilating the people of central Africa; stealing and brutalizing their children; and displacing hundreds of thousands of people in the process.”
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/uganda.htm
LRA? Never heard of them. Why? Because the western media are not interested. The LRA do not have a massive propaganda machine speaking for them. Unlike Hamas, they do not have journalists working for the BBC. (Fayad Abu Shamala)
This “conflict” in the Middle East is small fry compared to some places in Africa and where people are getting butchered o a daily basis. Yet it takes up almost the whole of the BBCs agenda on current affairs. Why does it? It poses no threat to the UK. The only possible explanation, to me at any rate, is anti-Semitism. There is no other reason why the starving and victimised poor of Africa be ignored for a small border dispute in the Middle East.
For the BBC to whip people up to a frenzy of mass hatred against a small democratic country makes me sick.
For many reasons, the BBC should be closed and their passage from a public service broadcaster to an anti-democratic propaganda machine be written in our history books and taught in schools, so that never again can an unelected small minority of people have so much influence on our lives again.
An excellent post, JHT. I hope the wish expressed in your last paragraph is fulfilled. I have a title for the history book to come: The BBC – Islam’s Running Dogs. A Master Class in Corruption.
Excellent post, JHT.
The LRA and similar in Africa have been virtually untouched by the BBC who have, to say the least, been equivocal on Sudan.
The latter I can understand, the BBC would be reluctant to take any side against muslim Governments.
The former, I suspect is really racism. Maybe the BBC don’t expect any better from “Black Africans”.
The Arab Spring came as such a surprise to the BBC because they essentially ignored North Africa and the Middle East in their obsessive concentration on Israel.
How does “poverty” in Gaza compare with other parts of the World ? Anyone starving to death ? They all look quite well fed to me and full of energy.
Don’t forget, “Poverty” means whatever the BBC wants it to mean. Under the previous Conservative government we apparently had great poverty in this country. If you didn’t have a car or a television you were considered to be poor in Thatcher’s and Major’s Britain.
To have contrasted that with poverty I saw at fairly close hand when I was a kid was a disgrace and remains so. The BBC are still talking about “Child Poverty” in the UK, but there’s always money to feed a drug habit.
There are probably some poorer people in Gaza than here but that is the fault of their own government and their supporters from the left-wing. And, I would suspect, there are millions of poorer people around the world than any in Gaza.
sue
You do realise that, to the BBC, impartiality in the matter of Jews/Arabs/Islam/Palestine/Israel entails just falling short of advocating a march to the gas chambers for the world’s Jews (maybe for Israeli Jews though but, in the BBC narrative, they’re nazis anyway).
I admire your – and other – contributors listening/viewing this dribble of ill-informed hysteria thus relieving the rest of us from polluting our minds (and raising our blood pressure) with the antisemitic propaganda churned out by the state broadcaster. Oh yes, while I’m on, look what I’ve turned up from the B-BBC archives – http://biasedbbc.tv/2010/07/lord-hamas.html – about the overseer of impartiality at the BBC.
Umbongo,
Thanks for the sympathy. I suffer from a perverse self inflicted obligation to watch these things on your behalf. Well, someone has to. Jeopardising mental stability, marital harmony, and occasionally Sunday lunch, just so I can complain ineffectually about the BBC while Lord Patten steers the ship inexorably towards God knows what.
I didn’t see the programme as I thought the series had finished for the summer. However I was surprised by the topic – Is it time to free Palestine? –because I thought that the series was supposed to be about Religion and Ethics. As such, I would expect questions about religion and general social themes such as justice and morality rather than something so obviously political and about a very specific situation.
Like others I avoid the programme and would hardly even hope that it might be balanced.
Much BBC discussion of this kind is similar to a fourth form debate started by a trendy supply teacher that has gone astray. Really the head should look in and tell them they are upsetting others with their racket.
For reasons that escape me the left has decided to link up with apparent Arab grievances. The BBC which always tacks to the left generally falls in with this tendency and is comfortable in making digs at Israel.
How the BBC gets away with this I just don’t know. Perhaps it would change if Britain went to war with Israel?
As I see it,
If the UK went to war with Israel, how would the BBC know which side to back ?
Precisely.
Grant
In a putative UK-Israel War, the BBC position would be analogous to mine concerning the real Iran-Iraq War in that I hoped they’d both lose.