The BBC sustained hatred towards Israel is one of the most disfiguring facets of the DState Corporation. I am advised by a Biased BBC contributor that Jeremy Bowen is doing his best to discredit Israel as usual….Israelis have no interest in peace, Israelis want the Arab dictators to stay in power and don’t support democracy in the Arab world…..missing out the probability that democracy isn’t the likely outcome of the ‘Arab Spring’…. Arab Spring spells uncertainty for Israel
‘….back in Jerusalem, surrounded once again by the hatreds that never seem to change. Israeli police with clubs and automatic weapons were still on guard at the gates to the walled old city. Plenty of Israelis believe that Palestinians have no interest in peace. Palestinians feel the same about Israelis and were still simmering with anger and resentment about the expansion of Jewish settlements. The old Middle East suited the Israelis. But it is disappearing. A top Israeli journalist told me a few years ago that every morning the foreign ministry in Jerusalem offered a prayer for the health of President Mubarak. What he meant was that Israel believed the best way to manage the threats it
saw in the old Middle East was to make sure that nothing changed.’
Several points to be made about Bowen’s commentary;
1. I suppose watching several neighbouring states fall under the control of the Jew-hating Muslim Brotherhood is cause for concern, maybe Jeremy could bring his forensic skills to bear on that?
2. Might Israel cynicism about Palestinians interest in peace be influenced by years of vicious bloodthirsty terrorism. Jeremy is too busy equating Palestinian concerns with Israel to let us know.
3. Curious how Jerusalem is instantly associated with “hatreds” in his choice of words, almost like he was trying to create some sort of subliminal association.
Bowen’s report tells me that he is a useless commentator. He admits that during those years while he was concentrating so hard on Israel he hardly ever visited the Arab states. What does he want now? A war between Egypt and Israel? That seems to be his subtext.
Where has Bowen been during the Libyan uprising?
It doesn’t matter – Sky are doing a much better job than Bowen ever could.
PS – Did anyone see the overweight, superannuated Simpson eventually “reporting” from the safety of some town well away from the fighting. He was developing the meme that there will be chaos during the transition. You don’t say!
An insidious piece from Bowen as ever, leaving him in then end to fall over his own anit-Semitic contradictions:-
“They have even come up with Hebrew versions of some of the Arabic chants for change that they have been watching on TV.
The old Middle East suited the Israelis. But it is disappearing.”
Erm, the Israelis are either adapting Arab movements for change, or the old Middle East suits them? Which is it Mr Bowen?
There is nothing for Israel to fear if the Arabs embrace democratic values, but of course, Bowen knows this is not the likely outcome of the Arab Spring. We will see the democracy of Hitler that we have seen in Gaza and the West Bank. One election and then no more; dictatorship.
three words encapsulates all that is Bowen
anti semitic twat
The BBC has reported the latest Tel Aviv ‘rampage’ by a 20 year-old Palestinian man.
The article is studiously impartial and concentrates on the facts, providing explanatory context where it deems appropriate. For example:
“Attacks by Palestinians in Israeli cities have been rare in recent years.”
That was helpful, now, wasn’t it?
“The incident comes amid heightened tensions after attackers killed eight Israelis near Eilat earlier this month.”
This time, for impartiality, they leave out unnecessary emotive reminders of how many of the dead were children.
“Israel blames Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip”
Scrupulously careful not to jump to conclusions, the BBC sticks to the facts, again, for impartiality.
The number of Palestinians killed in ‘hostilities that followed’ is mentioned, so as to provide context and justify the Palestinian militant’s anger, especially understandable as he was from a city in the occupied West Bank.
“Attacks by Palestinian militants in Israeli cities were common during the Second Intifada – the Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule – that lasted from 2000 to 2005, but have been rare in the years since.”
See? The militants who suffered under oppressive Israeli rule, as opposed to the peaceful, happy-go-lucky manner to which they‘d become accustomed. So no wonder they were militant, but due to their inherent forbearance they kindly stopped attacking, despite their frustration at the Israelis building that land-grabbing apartheid wall.
“In May, one person was killed when a lorry driven by an Israeli Arab ploughed into traffic and pedestrians shortly after morning rush hour in Tel Aviv.”
That’s included because it also occurred in Tel Aviv. It’s probably the reason why they didn’t mention the hundreds of rockets that have been fired into Israel recently, or the horrific murder of the Fogel family. They’re irrelevant, and gratuitously dragging them into this story would be biased.
Haaretz, Jerusalem Post, Ynet and Sky News all report eight wounded, not seven as reported by the BBC.
The BBC minimising Israeli casualties, as usual…
Patten named Bowen as one of the reasons why the BBC was so great…but being Lord Patten and BBC shoo-in for life-he used lots of big words to say the same thing.
A reference from Patten about your greatness?…that is ALL we need to know of this particular Jeremy.
Israel is going nowhere…Bowen and his ilk won`t bait that country for much longer than is needed I`d guess.
Does Bowen think the Israeli protests are about how their Government deals with the Palestinians? Or does he see only the superficial aspect of a crowd in the streets, and draw his own conclusions? It’s difficult to tell.
It’s quite illuminating to compare the BBC’s reporting on Israeli strikes in Gaza with this:
Turkish airstrike campaign ‘killed 160 Kurdish rebels’
The accompanying photo shows Turkish troops carrying coffins draped with Turkish flags, so the message is clearly that Turkey has suffered casualties.
The report begins…
Turkish jets bombed Kurdish rebel bases in northern Iraq in a series of air strikes last week which killed up to 160 rebels, Turkish officials say.
No ‘scare quotes’ around “rebels”, no mention as to whether all 160 killed were indeed “rebels” and not women or children.
There has been an increase in attacks by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) on Turkey’s army this summer, casting doubt on the chances of peace talks.
I’ve never, ever, seen a phrase like that used re Israel and Arab terrorism – it’s always Israel’s actions that “casts doubt on the chances of peace talks”!
The Turkish military has said that it would monitor rebel activity in the region and continue strikes until the rebels were “rendered ineffective”.
Artillery fire supported the strikes.
The strikes follow a deadly attack by the separatists in mid-August that killed nine Turkish troops and injured 14 in the district of Cukurca, in Hakkari province close to the border.
“Turkish air forces jets efficiently hit the targets of the separatist terror organization in Zap and Gara regions between August 25-28 in 21 sorties,” a statement on the army’s website is quoted by the AFP news agency as saying.
Heavy artillery fire was directed at 38 targets “in coordination with the air operation”, it said.
Correspondents say there is little talk now of renewing the so-called “democratic opening”, an initiative from two year ago, which aimed to end the conflict in the south-east by expanding the rights of the Kurdish minority.
The PKK, designated a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the EU and the US, has waged a 26-year insurgency against the Turkish state.
More than 40,000 people have been killed in the violence.
Compare that to any report on an Israeli strike on Gaza and the bias simply hits you in face. Substitute Turkish for Israeli and PKK for Hamas (or PLO).
INBBC double standards on ISRAEL compared with TURKEY.
INBBC opposes Jewish state of ISRAEL, but supports Islamic state of TURKEY (wanting its 80 million Muslims in E.U.).
(A reprise from earlier thread.)
INBBC’s Jeremy Bowen is apparently annoyed that he has somewhat neglected his political opposition to Israel of late.
So what is his political line now?: – that Israel becomes more ‘democratic’, like the sharia-law inspired millions of Muslims in Middle East Islamic states, who want Israel destroyed. (His ‘Arab Spring’.)
By the way, Bowen draws attention to the following in his article, but doesn’t criticise Islamic states for their attempted restrictions on his freedom of movement:
[Bowen, on the normalcy of Islamic ‘democracy’]:
“My passports say it all. Like most foreign correspondents in the Middle East I have two – one for Israel, the other for Arab countries.
That’s because some Arab states will not let you in if you have an Israeli visa.”
Bowen doesn’t criticize the Islamic states for this because he blames Israel for it.
I cannot imagine Jeremy Bowen reporting the following .. There again why not?!!
Hamas’ foreign minister, Mahmoud Al-Zahar, recently conducted a television interview in which he once more set out Hamas’ rejection of Israel’s right to exist. According to Memri, Al-Zahar used the interview, from 21 July, to argue that ‘Palestine in its entirety is Islamic waqf land, which cannot be relinquished’:
‘At this moment in time, we say to you, first of all: We want Palestine in its entirety – so there will not be any misunderstandings. If our generation is unable to achieve this, the next one will, and we are raising our children on this. Palestine means Palestine in its entirety, and Israel cannot exist in our midst.’
Al-Zahar also declared that Hamas would view any Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, or a compromise agreement with the Palestinian Authority, as only a ‘first stage’ towards the destruction of Israel in its entirety. He asserted that this was the key difference between Hamas and their secular rivals, Fatah.
Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian Authority’s Head of Foreign Relations doesn’t disagree. His chilling words were broadcast during an interview on Lebanese ABN television and aired on July 11, 2011. They were translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, (MEMRI) and posted Monday, July 25th. Here is what Nabal Shaath said in his own words..
[The new French UN peace initiative has] reshaped the issue of the “Jewish state” into a formula that is also unacceptable to us – two states for two peoples. They can describe Israel itself as a state for two peoples, but we will be a state for one people. The story of “two states for two peoples” means that there will be a Jewish people over there and a Palestinian people here. We will never accept this – not as part of the French initiative and not as part of the American initiative. We will not sacrifice the 1.5 million Palestinians with Israeli citizenship who live within the 1948 borders, and we will never agree to a clause preventing the Palestinian refugees from returning to their country. We will not accept this, whether the initiative is French, American, or Czechoslovakian. The recognition of a [Palestinian] state is basically a bilateral action, which receives the blessing of the UN. This act, however, will make many things possible in the future. Eventually, we will be able to sign bilateral agreements with states and this will enable us to exert pressure on Israel. At the end of the day, we want to exert pressure on Israel in order to force it to recognize us and to leave our country. This is our long-term goal.
The BBC’s antipathy towards Israel spills over from news & current events into drama as evidenced by the David Hare authored drama on Sunday night “Page 8”. The sympathetic character played by Rachel Weiscz was campaigning because her brother had been “murdered” by the Israelis when waving a white flag in the “occupied territiories”. He was an activist protesting about the Israelis “building the Wall” through a house. It is now received wisdom that that’s what the IDF does. And there was a wicked Israeli govt cover-up which was the levrage in the deal the Bill Nighy character did with our own Govt.
And that’s what passes for Bank Holiday entertainment on the BBC.