We’ve had a few looks at the likes of Jon Donnison who have been disseminating endless pictures of dead and injured children from Gaza and using them to attack Israel but Dan Hodges in the Telegraph neatly encapsulates all that needs to be said about the use of casualties as propaganda….

‘Atrocity porn’, and the online campaigners who use dead children to push political points

If you want to persuade me of your cause, persuade me. But don’t try to shame me, or shock me, or bully me onto your side.

If you do try to persuade me, do it with your arguments. Don’t do it with the broken, lifeless body of someone else’s child.

And most importantly, make your arguments with your words. Because if you can’t find sufficient words to convey at least part of the horror of what’s happening in Gaza and Iraq and the rest of our benighted, crumbling, morally bankrupt world, then it isn’t me that needs to take a look at themselves, it’s you.

John Humphrys yesterday (08:10) blamed the invasion of Iraq in 2003 for the rise of ISIS, choosing a moment in time and a particular event that Humphrys’ world seems to revolve around, and making that the sole trigger for events that occurred subsequently.

Humphrys is anti the Iraq War and so any chance he gets he tries to pin some blame for world calamities upon the invasion.

Two can play at that game of course…a good argument could be made to say John Humphrys is solely to blame for the rise of ISIS and the spread of Islamic terrorism around the world…having made false allegations about Tony Blair and having misled the world into thinking that the war was illegal he has ensured that governments now are very reluctant to engage in military action or suppression of Islamic terrorism…..leading to a free for all in the Middle East….never mind the rise of ‘conservative Islam’ here in the UK.

But let’s not be judgemental…let’s be more generous and merely ask why Humphrys limits his historic blame game to events in 2003?  He has always opposed the Iraq War and was prepared to mislead the listener and spread misinformation when broadcasting on the subject…perhaps his editor or producer should reconsider when choosing who to front a piece on Iraq, Humphrys being seriously compromised, damaged goods.

Wy not choose to go back to say 1914?…..the BBC are after all always ready to blame the British in WWI for the creation of Israel, which as we know is the cause of all the trouble in the world……so why not blame Bosnian Serb, Gavrilo Princip, for the rise of the Jihadis?

The link is clear…Princip kills the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand, leading to the First World War, the rise of the Soviets, the rise of Hitler, the  eventual creation of both Israel and Pakistan and Al Qaeda.

Hitler started the Second World War and lost.  The Soviets then annexed much of Europe and started the Cold War which climaxed in their defeat in Afghanistan by Mujahideen supported by the West.  The Mujahideen had morphed into Al Qaeda under the guidance of Osama Bin Laden.

Bin Laden wanted to invade Iraq and depose Saddam with his own Mujahideen…’He didn’t like him, and he told me he wanted to kick him out of Iraq, as he considered the Ba’th regime to be an atheist regime. He considered Saddam Hussein an atheist, and he hates an atheist’…… but was rebuffed by Saudi Arabia who invited in the infidel Americans to do the job in 1991…leading to OBL’s terminal case of the grumps against the world and his subsequent plots against the ‘Far Enemy’, the USA, with his creation ‘Al Qaeda’.

Meanwhile Pakistan created the Taliban as a proxy army to control Afghanistan which led to Al Qaeda having a Jihadi friendly training base and 9/11, and thence the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq by the West….then we had the Arab Spring, set in motion by a fruit seller, Mohammed Bouazizi, in Tunisia as the BBC always admiringly tells us , followed by mass uprisings and conflict in Egypt and then Syria.

‘Mohamed Bouazizi’s image has been used to inspire protesters throughout the Arab world’

Events in Syria led to the resurgence of ISIS….So Mohammed Bouazizi must be a good candidate for hanging the blame on for the recreation of ISIS in John Humphrys world.

ISIS is an off-shoot of Al Qaeda, and as mentioned Al Qaeda wanted to depose Saddam long before the US got boots on the ground in 1991…so Humphrys’ claim that ISIS and the current war in Iraq is a creation of the 2003 Iraq invasion has little basis in fact…ISIS was beaten in Iraq by the ‘Surge’, the same Surge that Humphrys always claimed would never work.  ISIS retreated but rebuilt and used the violent carnage in Syria to recreate itself…..only to be driven out of much of Syria by another Jihadi group, al Nusra…..ISIS made the best of it and set out to take as much of Iraq as it could…taking advantage of the discontent felt by Sunni Iraqis towards the Shia lead government.

Humphrys also blames the 2003 Iraq invasion for putting the Shia Maliki in government as PM who then adopted policies that favoured the Shia that subsequently created that ISIS friendly discontent opening the way for the ISIS takeover.

But that is all to convenient and suits Humphrys’ own narrative.  If you want to cast some blame for the Shia/Sunni conflict you only have to look at Saddam’s policy of crushing the Shia rather than integrating them.  They now take their revenge.  Humphrys also conveniently forgets the Shia Iran/ Sunni Iraq war.

Or you could go right back over a thousand years to the split in Islam between the Sunnis and the Shia.

Why doesn’t Humphrys go back to that time?  Why does he stop in 2003? It suits his agenda.

What we have with Humphrys is a BBC journalist hijacking history,  abusing his position to peddle his own fantasies with editors and producers too weak or too much on board the same narrative to stop him.

Trying to pin the blame for particular events on a single previous event is, as shown above, childishly simple to discredit and mock.  No one single event can be said to be to blame for future events, any event is the cumulation of many, many historic occurrences that lead up to it.  Cherry picking ones that allow you to spin a tale that you want to be true doesn’t make it so.

Just as Humphrys misled us about the start of the war he now misleads us about the subsequent fallout.

Good job we don’t have to rely on the BBC for the truth.  Just a shame we still are forced to pay for this misinformation/tripe.

The BBC does not bother its audience with the complexities and horrors of the conflict between Palestinians and Israel but instead offers  a vision not unlike Warsi’s and Clegg’s where Hamas are the heroes and Israel the villain.

Sayeeda Warsi and Nick Clegg are both eager to disarm the Israeli Defence Forces.

They don’t like the Israeli approach to self-defence as illustrated here…far too much disproportionate force….an unarmed little man being herded like an animal by a Jew at the point of a bayonet:

But they do seem entirely unconcerned about the all too likely outcome of their disarmament policy…strip the Israelis of their right to defend themselves and they swap a proud uniform for concentration camp pyjamas…the pogroms have already begun in Europe thanks to the willfully misleading reporting from the likes of the BBC:

From the Telegraph:

Moshe Dayan, then chief of the general staff, put it succinctly in 1956, in a eulogy at the graveside of a kibbutznik murdered by Arab infiltrators: “For eight years, they have sat in the refugee camps of Gaza, and have watched how we have turned their lands and villages, where they and their forefathers previously dwelled, into our home… Beyond the furrow of the border surges a sea of hatred and revenge… Let us not fear to look squarely at the hatred that consumes and fills the lives of hundreds [of thousands] of Arabs who live around us… This is our choice – to be ready and armed, tough and harsh – or else the sword shall fall from our hands and our lives will be cut short.”

[What does Hamas want?]

Like Isis in Iraq and Syria, like al Qaeda, the Shabab in Somalia and Boko Haram in Nigeria, it seeks to destroy Western neighbours.

The Nick Cleggs of this world, who call on Britain to suspend arms sales to Israel, are their accomplices. It’s as if they really don’t understand the world they live in, like those liberals in Britain and France who called for disarmament and pro-German treaty revision in the Thirties. But the message is clear. The barbarians truly are at the gates.

Today, standing in solidarity with the Warsis and Cleggs of this world,  the BBC proudly publishes photographs it has taken from Jon Donnison’s Twitter feed….you might think that there must be something wrong with the BBC’s guidelines if it allows its journalists to use Twitter to promote a terrorist organisation…seems not though.

In pictures: Faces from Gaza

Images taken by the BBC’s Jon Donnison in Gaza reveal the experiences of ordinary people amid the Israeli military operation to destroy tunnels and rockets used by militants. To see more of Jon’s pictures, follow him on Twitter @jondonnison.

No context at all from the BBC….just the usual stream of photographs of injured and despairing people, children mainly, designed not to bring you the facts to allow you to analyse the situation but intended to impact you purely on an emotional level and turn you against Israel.

Perhaps BBC reporters should have their own award, one that marks them out as those whose contribution to the breakdown of civilisation and the rising tide of anti-Semitism has been duly recognised…….something that reflects their integrity, professionalism and balanced, impartial reporting……

Here, from that previous Telegraph article, Benny Morris asks where is all that missing context in the Media?:

Israelis might argue that the (relatively) lightly armed Hamasniks in Gaza want to drive the Jews into the sea; that the struggle isn’t really between Israel and the Palestinians but between little Israel and the vast Arab and Muslim worlds, which long for Israel’s demise ; even that Israel isn’t the issue, that Islamists seek the demise of the West itself, and that Israel is merely an outpost of the far larger civilisation that they find abhorrent and seek to topple.

But television doesn’t show this bigger picture; images can’t elucidate ideas. It shows mighty Israel crushing bedraggled Gaza. Western TV screens never show Hamas – not a gunman, or a rocket launched at Tel Aviv, not a fighter shelling a nearby kibbutz. In these past few weeks, it has seemed as if Israel’s F-16s and Merkava tanks and 155mm artillery have been fighting only wailing mothers, mangled children, run-down concrete slums. Not Hamasniks. Not the 3,000 rockets reaching out for Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Beersheba. Not mortar bombs crashing into kibbutz dining halls. Not rockets fired at Israel from Gaza hospitals and schools, designed to provoke Israeli counterfire that could then be screened as an atrocity.

A vivid description from Benny Morris which perfectly outlines the likes of the BBC’s coverage which is shallow and unsophisticated, meant purely to persuade rather than to inform.

What the BBC deliberately avoids is the likely outcome should Hamas and its fellow travellers prevail and succeed in overrunning Israel.

What would Donnison’s Twitter feed look like then?

Here’s a bit of minority reporting from the future that attempts to predict that future…….a ‘future’ just as plausible as the BBC’s ‘present’ as depicted by its coverage of events in Gaza……

You may think that is a scenario that is way over the top, and hopefully you’d be right.  Islamist Hamas would never go that far…would they?

Then again….look at Syria and Iraq…….500 people being buried alive, Christians forced to convert or die, thousands executed in cold blood, severed heads held aloft by 7 year olds, whole peoples threatened with extinction and genocide.

Look at the Fogels, look at the 3 teenagers abducted and murdered on the orders of Hamas….look at the planned invasion of Israeli villages through the tunnels in September with the probable intent to kill as many Israelis, military or civilian, as possible.

They are capable of it.

The BBC’s journalists seem to be working, by design or stupidity, towards giving them the chance.

Tony Hall must be immensely proud of his swarm of highly trained journos bringing the complexities of the world to us in such simple but lucid and intense reports of the fighting between Hamas fighters and the IDF, the rigorous investigations of casualty figures, the many photographs of Hamas fighters firing from the vicinity of schools, hospitals and mosques,  the accurate analysis of who fired what when, the revelations about the massive transportation of goods into Gaza even as a war rages….the BBC isn’t just some cheap propaganda unit churning out Hamas friendly material…it brings you the truth.

Doesn’t it?

BBC journalist:

#Gaza. Disagree strongly with #Netanyahu’s comments. In the 2 weeks I was there, Hamas never intimidated the #BBC: http://t.co/Z1v8QxtOJz

— Kelvin Brown (@KelvinNews) August 8, 2014

The Foreign Press Association:

Hamas is using threats and pressure to prevent journalists from providing objective reports, the Foreign Press Association in Israel and Palestine said in a statement Monday.

The organization said it “protests in the strongest the blatant, incessant, forceful and unorthodox methods employed by the Hamas authorities and their representatives against visiting international journalists in Gaza over the past month.”

“The international media are not advocacy organizations and cannot be prevented from reporting by means of threats or pressure, thereby denying their readers and viewers an objective picture from the ground,” the FPA added. According to the FPA, several members of the foreign media in Gaza were harassed, threatened or questioned about stories they reported.

In addition, the FPA vehemently opposes “a ‘vetting’ procedure that would, in effect, allow for the blacklisting of specific journalists,” which Hamas is trying to put into place.

What appears to attract the attention of Hamas goons is journalists reporting things that Hamas doesn’t want reported. Perhaps that helps to explain why BBC journalists haven’t run into them.

Monday morning arrives and so does a new week of toxic bias from the State Broadcaster. Here is where to detail the bias!

The BBC loves images and heart wrenching tales of children suffering….if caused by Israelis….the guiding principle for any BBC journo is that tears of a child say more than words ever can. Here the BBC examines the suffering of children in Gaza and Syria:  Children in conflict

What they don’t tell us is this remarkable statistic:

‘At least 160 children died digging tunnels for Hamas’

Use of child labor not stopped by police in Gaza, where children’s “nimble bodies” help dig the tunnels that lead into Israel and Egypt.

Hamas used children to help them dig numerous tunnels into Israel and Egypt, a 2012 paper written for the Journal of Palestine Studies reported. The paper, titled Gaza’s Tunnel Phenomenon: The Unintended Dynamics of Israel’s Siege says that little had been done to stop the phenomenon of child labor during the digging of the tunnels by Hamas in Gaza. In December 2011, the paper’s author Nicolas Pelham accompanied a police patrol in Gaza and reported that “nothing was done to impede the use of children in the tunnels, where, much as in Victorian coal mines, they are prized for their nimble bodies.”

Hamas used children to help them dig numerous tunnels into Israel and Egypt, a 2012 paper written for the Journal of Palestine Studies reported. The paper, titled Gaza’s Tunnel Phenomenon: The Unintended Dynamics of Israel’s Siege says that little had been done to stop the phenomenon of child labor during the digging of the tunnels by Hamas in Gaza. In December 2011, the paper’s author Nicolas Pelham accompanied a police patrol in Gaza and reported that “nothing was done to impede the use of children in the tunnels, where, much as in Victorian coal mines, they are prized for their nimble bodies.”

The report miraculously vanished from the fervently pro-Palestinian ‘Institute for Palestinian Studies’ site but has since made a reappearance:

Gaza’s Tunnel Phenomenon: The Unintended Dynamics of Israel’s Siege

A similarly cavalier approach to child labor and tunnel fatalities damaged the movement’s standing with human-rights groups, despite government assurances dating back to 2008 that it was considering curbs. During a police patrol that the author was permitted to accompany in December 2011, nothing was done to impede the use of children in the tunnels, where, much as in Victorian coal mines, they are prized for their nimble bodies. At least 160 children have been killed in the tunnels, according to Hamas officials.

In 1970 Apollo 13 had a problem…a serious malfunction due to unexpectedly extreme cold conditions causing massive icing of control systems.

You never heard about that because the media suppressed the news as it ran counter to the growing consensus that was just starting to form amongst scientists that the world, the universe and everything was warming due to man’s emissions.

Naturally that’s not true…in the 70’s we were worried about global cooling, but that’s all over now.

More up to date though the BBC has been rather coy about giving us all the facts.  Here they report that an Antarctic research station had to close due to power failure:

Antarctic Halley Station lost power and heat at -32C

All power, including heating, to an Antarctic research station housing 13 people was lost for 19 hours, it has been revealed.

With temperatures as low as -32C (-25F), members of the Cambridge-based British Antarctic Survey (BAS) at the Halley VI Station suffered the power loss on 30 July.

All staff are currently safe and in good health, the BAS said.

The cause of the power loss has not been determined.

They tell us that temperatures were -32C but what does that mean?  Where’s the context?

Why does the BBC not tell us that the temps were in fact more extreme…and at record lows?:

Just who is besieging who?

We keep hearing about the siege of Gaza…that’ll be the Gaza that has a free flow of goods into it, subject to them being of no use militarily, and the flow of Gazans into Israel to the jobs they have there…never mind the sick and injured that get treatment in Israeli hospitals.

On the other hand there is the 70 year assault on Israel by its Arab neighbours, not to mention Iran, which aims to wipe Israel off the map and the Jews along with it.

A constant onslaught of savage terrorist attacks on Israelis, not just in Israel but around the world, an endless barrage of rockets into Israel and the ever present threat of State sponsored military attacks against Israel should serve to remind people just who is under siege.

But you wouldn’t guess that from the BBC’s and other media outlet’s coverage which is why a reminder is necessary…..

From Alan Johnson in the Telegraph:

It’s time to bust the ‘Israeli blockade led to Hamas rockets’ myth

Here is the widely believed fallacy: the Israeli blockade of Gaza led to the firing of Hamas rockets from Gaza.

And here is the little known truth: it was the firing of Hamas rockets from Gaza that led to the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

The fallacy distorts our understanding of why these escalations keep happening and what will make a durable peace possible. The fallacy frames the Israeli blockade of Gaza as motiveless and cruel at best, demonic at worst, while it presents the firing of Hamas rockets on Israeli civilians as acts of resistance. The fallacy makes us think that if only Israel “lifted the blockade” then peace would break out.

The fallacy spreads because of ignorance.

People do not know that when Israel left Gaza in 2005, the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon – who, like Rabin and Barak before him, and like Olmert after him, had crossed his Rubicon, finally accepting the need to divide the land – said: “We desire a life living side-by-side, in understanding and peace. Our goal [in disengaging] is that the Palestinians will be able to live in dignity and freedom in an independent state, and, together with us, enjoy good neighbourly relations.”

They do not know that the reply from the Hamas bomb-making chief Mohammed Deif was instant. On the website of the Izz-al Din Qassam Brigades he declared: “I thank Allah the exalted for his support in the Jihad of our people. I ask for your assistance to our jihad… We shall not rest until our entire holy land is liberated … To the Zionists we promise that tomorrow all of Palestine will become hell for you…”

They do not know that in spite of the Hamas threats, after leaving Gaza Israel signed an Agreement on Movement and Access with the Palestinian Authority which gave the Palestinians control over their own borders for the first time in history, allowed for imports and exports, and even approved construction of a seaport and discussions on an airport.

Unfortunately, Hamas does not respect deals made between the PA and Israel.

They do not know that Hamas launched a coup in 2007, took over the Strip, drove out its Palestinian political rival Fatah, threw their fellow Palestinians from rooftops, and declared as the new rulers of Gaza that they would now use the Strip as a base to destroy Israel.

They do not know that as a direct result, not only Israel but also Egypt put restrictions on the borders with Gaza, and Israel instituted a legal maritime blockade around Gaza to keep rockets and other weapons out of the hands of Hamas, while letting food and other humanitarian aid in.

They do not know that a UN inquiry (the 2011 Palmer Report) determined that Israel’s policy was legal given the threat it faced.

They do not know that in March 2014, Israel intercepted an Iranian ship, one of several intercepted by Israel, with a cargo of weapons to Hamas in Gaza, including advanced M-302 surface-to-surface missiles, showing again why the naval blockade is necessary.

They do not know that millions of Egyptians loathe Hamas as much as Israelis do. (Watch this compilation of Egyptian bile being poured over the heads of Hamas.)

They do not know that Hamas describes Palestine as “an Islamic Waqf (Endowment) consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day” or that it pledges “Israel will exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it”.

They do not know that Hamas rejects all possible compromise with Israel, and all possibility of a negotiated peace in the following terms: “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavours.”

David Horovitz, the British-born editor of the Times of Israel, expresses the exasperation of many Israelis about all this. He pleads for “opinion-shapers overseas to… exercise just a smidgen of intellectual honesty”, and stop contriving not to see that “If there was no rocket fire from this non-disputed enclave, there would be no Israeli response, and nobody would be dying.”

Warsi resigned from the government complaining bitterly about the government’s lack of action in holding Israel to account and its failure to stop Israel conducting anymore military operations.

It was all about Israel.

Indeed Warsi wanted to in effect disarm Israel leaving it unable to defend itself.

That of course doesn’t look too good…a Muslim demanding a Jewish state be disarmed and held to account for its ‘war crimes’….when she makes no similar demands about Syria, ISIS or Boko Haram.

And it was all about Israel as this interview on Channel 4 quite plainly shows.

However a few days after resigning she has clearly recognised the stance she has taken has made her look at the very least, anti-Israel and pro-Hamas ….looking very ‘morally indefensible’ herself.

To salvage her ‘moral’ position  she was given another bite of the apple by the Today programme on Saturday….interviewed by Mishal Husain.….suddenly not just Israel but Hamas has to be held to account for its actions and arms must be prevented from being supplied to Hamas as well…..what about Fatah, Hezbollah, Iran and Syria?

So now we know,  she wasn’t just having a go at the Jewish state. Clear?  Good.

On listening to the interview you might think Husain did an OK job…she asked some awkward questions and kept at it when Warsi tried to dodge answering….especially about whether the resignation was political.

However other questions weren’t asked…ones that are just as, if not more relevant.

When asked why she had resigned just as a ceasefire had been negotiated she said that the ceasefire didn’t hold and her hopes were dashed.

But Husain didn’t then jump in and make the obvious point that it was Hamas that broke the ceasefire…so why is the government’s position towards Israel the problem?  Isn’t it the Islamist Hamas that is the instigator of all this violence?

The biggest question though would have been ‘Did you resign because you are a Muslim?’

Warsi has been stating quite clearly that Gaza has ‘radicalised’ Muslims in the UK so it is fair to ask her if she has been ‘radicalised’…in her own way…..blocking attempts to tackle Muslim extremism.

She complains Cameron doesn’t tackle Israeli ‘extremism’ and yet she herself was the problem here at home:

Baroness Warsi is alleged by multiple sources in and out of government to have consistently resisted calls to develop a proper strategy on integration and tackling extremism at its roots, even though this is the Prime Minister’s policy and part of her job at the Communities and Local Government department. One source says: ‘Sayeeda made clear when she got the job at CLG that she didn’t agree with the Prime Minister and that she simply wasn’t going to do this bit of her job.’

A follow on question to that would have been…‘Are you suggesting British foreign policy be driven by those who make threats to bomb or otherwise attack the UK?’  because that was seemingly what she was saying should happen in her coded message about radicalisation and this not playing ‘domestically’….and by domestically she very specifically meant in the Muslim community….‘the British response to the crisis in Gaza will have a long term “detrimental impact on our reputation internationally and domestically”.’

Warsi was without question saying the government’s policies towards Israel should be guided by what the Muslim community thinks….the subtext to that being…or else they will become radicalised…and who knows what would happen then…..though,  as in her C4 interview she links it all to British recruits heading off to Syria and ISIS,  you can see her meaning.

Just what are those ‘consequences’ she speaks of ‘at home’?….’our current policy on Gaza is morally indefensible that it is not in our interests, not in British interests and that it will have consequences for us both internationally and here at home.’

The Interview by Husain on one level was quite good but as always with the BBC, on certain taboo subjects, failed to ask the really nasty, awkward questions that get to the truth….not that C4’s interview was hard hitting in the slightest…..accepting Warsi’s claims about Israeli actions as completely legitimate.

Heard ‘The Brig Society’ for the first time.

Quite painful.

Even the audience weren’t really laughing.

Here’s a sample…

If you don’t want abuse on social media don’t take on the Scottish Nationalists:

Don’t call their beliefs a lot of blue faced william wallacy bollocks...because

I’d have provoked less rage and furious threats if I’d poked a hole in the Stone of Scone and worn it as a prophylactic whilst riding round Glasgow naked singing Donald where’s your troosers and flinging Union Jack painted haggis’ at the locals screaming batter that then you wee ginger health statistic!

Funny he wouldn’t dare say such things about a Muslim community….

I’d have provoked less rage and furious threats if I’d poked a hole in the Koran and worn it as a prophylactic whilst riding round Luton naked singing Jihad where’s your Burkha and flinging Israeli flag painted onion bahjis at the locals screaming behead that then you wee bearded terrorist!