Interviewing the Israeli PM back on June 7, Evan Davis starts with a fair question, and it’s fine that it has a challenging tone to it. After all, it’s an interview:
Prime Minister, you’ve said Israel will not allow Iran to have nuclear weapons; how do you propose to stop them?
But then comes the inevitable BBC perception that Israel is misguided and practically alone in the world in its approach to everything, including Iran:
Most of the world thinks the deal is the best way of stopping them. You’re not a supporter of the deal. All roads lead to military action, don’t they?
Netanyahu disagrees and mentions paralyzing sanctions as a way to subdue Iran.
Davis says, You’re not going to get the world behind sanctions, demonstrating BBC wishful thinking, along with the bias.
The debate on Iran and sanctions and military action goes on for a while, with Davis losing, till, at 3:40 minutes in, he switches to two major events on May 14, which must have had the BBC gnashing its collective teeth in rage and frustration: the opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem and the shooting of protestors on the Gaza border. He does his best to portray the Israel PM as a monster, glorifying in the Embassy opening while refusing to wear sackcloth and ashes over the tragic deaths on the border – of 50 Hamas terrorists, a couple of Islamic Jihad terrorists and about ten human shields, including children, as the terrorists cut through the fence under cover of a huge cloud of black smoke from burning tyres, striving to get into Israel to murder Jews.
At 7:40 minutes in, Davis says, I think the really important thing is, who is the obstacle to peace. And in terms of how the world sees the division of terrain… [And he carries on with the standard BBC uninformed bias about the conflict. Now of course we’ve graduated from not only the majority being against Israel but the entire bloody planet.]
There’s a funny moment at 11:10 minutes in when Davis says, …we’re out of our allotted time… and the PM responds with a smile and, I’ll give you a little more time. Davis does not appear to grasp the humour.
The PM ends on a positive note, re Israeli Jewish and Arab doctors treating wounded Syrian civilians who cannot believe the kindness and help they find in Israel because they have always been told that the Israelis are the devil.
I haven’t dwelt on the PM’s responses to Davis since I’ve tried to concentrate on Davis’ bias, but the way he dealt with the bias – by calmly explaining the Israeli perspective – is worth a look.
The scruffy Evan Davis, who looks, with his growth of beard and open-necked shirt, like he has just been hauled off the street, freshened up a bit and plonked before the PM, might even have learned something from the encounter.
Thanks for the analysis.
Story of PA torture continues to be side-lined by BBC
https://bbcwatch.org/2018/07/02/story-of-pa-torture-continues-to-be-side-lined-by-bbc/
Yet there are so many contributions Israel is making to the world for health, environment, in science ,technology and new innovations the BBC must have a difficult job to actually avoid mentioning them ! See http://www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com
one of the absurd charges against President Trump is that he is anti Semitic. The progressives persist with this despite the obvious absurdity.
They also persist in putting faith in the so called Iran deal.
The reality is that Iran wants to go nuclear and world safety cannot allow it to happen. The mullahs are unstable and driven by a fantasy of the end days and the return of a hidden iman.
Then it means that Arabia, China, Russia and Israel have common cause with the US not to mention many smaller states.
Much of the technical assistance for the Iranians came from N.Korea. Hence the urgency to bring Kim to accept his position and make him an offer he would be foolish to refuse.
Iran will be slowly isolated and regime change one way or another is the end game.
Nuclear weapons have irretrievably changed the world . If it is to survive then they must be kept to as few countries as possible all of which will act in concert to prevent other rogue states getting them
It just has to be this way and when President Trump ended the Iran deal he was recognising this reality and making it clear to all .
That May ‘s lot cannot grasp this is typical. Neither can the EU get it.
When the President comes here and to Europe I expect he will spell it out in private and possibly in public.
Behind him are undoubtedly China, Russia. Saudi Arabia, Israel and Japan.
It is a measure of how little Europe matters that we will be told rather than consulted and this makes it all rather pointless and the planned protests completely irrelevant . Nobody that matters cares .
It is obvious that the BBC have ‘lines to take’, which I presume are not difficult for the interviewers, as it is what they think anyway. But the snarling and sulking when they cannot trap somebody into giving them the headline for the next 24 hours is positively childlike. Maybe they get a bonus if a sound bite can be used? But I presume the ‘line’ is decided by that ex Labour MP on a ridiculous salary (and sorry I have forgotten his name) but the agreed angle goes through everything from nature to drama to religion.
Is this Evan D an Equal Opp hire from one of the new universities.
Pitting him against Netanyahu – no contest.
This from Wiki
After graduating from high school in 1967, Netanyahu returned to Israel to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces. He trained as a combat soldier and served for five years in an elite special forces unit of the IDF, Sayeret Matkal. He took part in numerous cross-border assault raids during the 1967–70 War of Attrition, rising to become a team-leader in the unit. He was wounded in combat on multiple occasions.[4] He was involved in many other missions, including Operation Inferno (1968), and the rescue of the hijacked Sabena Flight 571 in May 1972 in which he was shot in the shoulder.[17]
Netanyahu studied at MIT between 1972 and 1976, earning SB and SM degrees.[18]
After completing his army service in 1972, Netanyahu returned to the United States in late 1972 to study architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He returned to Israel in October 1973 to serve in the Yom Kippur War in the Sayeret Matkal commando unit.[3][19] While there, he fought in special forces raids along the Suez Canal against the Egyptian forces, before leading a commando attack deep inside Syrian territory, whose mission remains classified today.[20]
He then returned to the United States and under the name Ben Nitay, completed an SB degree[18] in architecture[21] in February 1975 and earned an SM[18] degree from the MIT Sloan School of Management in June 1976. Concurrently, he was studying towards a doctorate[19] in political science,[22][23] until his studies were broken off by the death of his brother in Operation Entebbe.[19]
At MIT, Netanyahu studied a double-load, completing an SM (that would normally take four years) in only two and a half years, despite taking a break to fight in the Yom Kippur War, and while simultaneously completing a thesis in a graduate course at Harvard.[19] Professor Groisser at MIT recalled: “He did superbly. He was very bright. Organized. Strong. Powerful. He knew what he wanted to do and how to get it done.”[19]
He is like a Churchill but with distinction in a STEM discipline from MIT.
Yes, Netanyahu, though inexplicably unpopular among great swathes of the Israeli left, is a powerful defender of Israel on the world stage and an ideal PM.
Him against Evan Davis?! No contest.
TrueToo….what on earth are the Israeli Left for ???…..
Oddly, bbc editorial integrity is often cited as the reason for time and space constraints seeing things never appear, much less lurk for decades.
Maybe the bbc doesn’t have any?
Guest Who,
This poisonous BBC fiddling with Entebbe is totally outrageous. I think I’m going to concoct an above-line response.
Guest who,
If the BBC had any integrity it would add a prominent note to that article, apologizing for the vile slur on the Israelis.
Sending it down the memory hole is not good enough.
You will be a skeleton before they apologise…..they are imbeciles…they all walk funny because they are constantly ‘up themselves’…..
Good dig.
Let the BBC keep up this conspiracy theory on their site. I hope they dont remove it.
NCBBC,
I tried to delve into the matter by accessing the UK gov website for those declassified documents:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/
Got there via the Guardian, of all places, which helpfully supplied this link:
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/https://nationalarchives.gov.uk/releases/2007/june/entebbe.htm
The website provides a short summary of the contents of the documents, including this gem:
The files contain communications about the hijacking, and debate over whether the British Prime Minister should congratulate Israel following the final assault.
Funny how they had to have a debate about doing the right thing.
So far I’ve been unable to download the documents but will persevere. They could be the same ones that contain the conspiracy slur since they were ‘open’ in May 2007. I’m keen to see what other info was available to Dan Parkinson when he chose to single out the conspiracy.
A new film on Raid on Entebba is apparently going to be full On PC feminst stuff.
Cant wait. Not.