Author Archives: Natalie

Stan Brin copied us the text of his complaint regarding a story about Jewish nostalgia for Iraq. He wrote:

The story “Israelis from Iraq remember Babylon” posted at:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6611667.stm [Israelis from Iraq remember Babylon] is essentially a hoax. It falsely disguises a mass expulsion and terror campaign as a “mass migration” as if they just chose to move, or perhaps there was a crop failure. In fact, there were mass riots and mass murder.

Perhaps your “journalist” found someone who remembers the Shiah Muharam holiday fondly but I never met anyone who wanted to return to Iraq. I am an expert in middle east history, and lived with Jews from Arab countries, and they were unanimous that they would never go back, even if they miss the food.

It should be noted that well over 99 percent of the Jews of Arab countries fled since 1948. Most Jewish communities (except in Morocco) are essentially extinct. Some of the Jews were forcibly deported (Egypt and Libya), others escaped by fleeing across borders (Iraq, Syria, Yemen). All lost everything they had, their propert stolen, their citizenship revoked. Many died as they fled.

Iraq, the subject of the story, was especially brutal. Of a quarter million Jews in 1940, perhaps a dozen remain today.

My Iraq-born roommate fled across mountains, avoiding Iraqi border police who would have had him tortured to death. He tells of an Iraqi border guard who kept a box filled with the finger nails of Jews whom he and his colleagues captures.

He has no nostalgia for Iraq.

What next from BBC? Auschwitz was a fun place to visit? Jews enjoy oppression?

I guess that all begs the questions, if the Jews enjoyed having their finger nails pulled out, would they want to go back to Iraq so the Palestinians could move in?

Stan Brin

Some of the phrases used in the BBC article by Lipika Pelham are certainly masterpieces of euphemism.

“For the Jews of Middle Eastern origins, like their European co-religionists, coming to Israel was the culmination of a religious journey – it was the fulfilment of the centuries-old dream to live in the so-called Promised Land.”

Sounds like something from a success book. Follow your dream! Oh, sorry, should read “follow your so-called dream.” The impression is given that the mass movement of Iraqi Jews to Israel was primarily motivated by religious enthusiasm. I have no doubt that they did rejoice that next year would indeed be in Jerusalem. They also rejoiced to have escaped alive, if destitute. Ethnic cleansing is not usually described so pleasantly by the BBC.

“But many who came over to Israel as part of the mass migration that followed the creation of the Jewish state in 1948, look back with nostalgia and fondness for the life that they had left behind.”

Followed the creation of the Jewish state? “Followed by” is a phrase often used by BBC when it wishes to imply causality without having to assert it. It is certainly literally true that Operation Ezra and Nehemiah followed the creation of the Jewish state. However since it took place in 1950-52 the “following” was distant enough for other events to slip in between them, some of which might be worthy of mention. By omitting the violent persecution of Iraq’s Jews that took place in the meantime, the BBC implicitly shifts blame from the persecutors onto the Jewish state.

“…the descendants of the Iraqi and Kurdish Jewish immigrants.”

I assume that in the interests of consistency all references to “Palestinian refugee camps” such as this one will shortly be changed to “Palestinian immigrant camps.”

“Yakov recalls, with vivid, powerful details, the life that he had once led, a life that was changed overnight by the political realities of the time.”

At the idea of including in the same sentence praise for “vivid, powerful details” and the detail-free phrase “changed by the political realities of the time”, Sir Humphrey himself would blush for shame.

“Anti-Jewish sentiment flared up after the creation of Israel and the subsequent Arab-Israeli war in 1948-49.”

Any news on what form expression of that sentiment took? Any news on the riots and pogroms? Any news of the dismissal of Jews from government service? Any news of how Shafiq Ades was hanged on a trumped up charge, presumably by those malicious political realities? Not from the BBC.

“This led to the departure of most of Iraq’s ancient Jewish community. By 1952, 120,000 Jews had left Iraq for Israel.”

“Led to”. See comments on “Followed by” above.

UPDATE: According to News Sniffer the two sentences I quoted just above, referring anti-Jewish sentiment flaring up and how this “led to” the departure of most Iraqi Jews – two sentences that I thought inadequate and vague enough to criticise specifically – are actually an improvement. The original version of the article did not include them.

The Telegraph’s David Blair writes about The BBC’s Gadaffi love-in. (Hat tip: ben)

Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.

have a video out on YouTube – Can America Trust the BBC?

The following BBC story, Three killed at Turkish publisher, describes how three people have had their throats slit at a publishing house in Turkey that produces Bibles, or bibles as the BBC puts it. All the bold type in the excerpts below was added by me.

Nationalists had protested at the publishing house in the past, accusing it of involvement in missionary activities, local media reported.

There is a rising wave of nationalist feeling in Turkey, the BBC’s Sarah Rainsford reports, with Christian minorities complaining of pressure and harassment.

In the most serious incident so far, a Catholic priest was killed last year by a teenage nationalist gunman as he prayed in his church.

[…]

Malatya is known here as a very nationalistic city, often with an extreme religious undertone, our correspondent adds.

It is the hometown of Mehmet Ali Agca, who in 1981 shot Pope John Paul II.

Turkey’s Christian community comprises less than 1% of its population. More than 99% of the Turkish population is Nationalist.

I changed the very last word of the article.

Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.

One more thing. A commenter, Bryan, pointed out that our monthly archives seem to have disappeared. Presumably this is something to do with the new version of Blogger. Anyone know how to rectify this? The material is still there, because searching for key words works fine – in fact better than it did in the old version of Blogger.

When the charges against the lacrosse team at Duke University were first laid the BBC covered it in this article by Daniel Lak.

The article correctly takes no explicit view about the truth or otherwise of the charge, as at that time investigations were still proceeding. A great deal of the article, in fact, is not about the details of the particular case at all. Rather it is “framing” – all about the race, gender and class issues that make it a big story. Fair enough. I hate to say this, but no broadcaster could cover all of the rape trials that take place in the world. The reason this one resonated was the contrast between the rich white frat boys and the poor black stripper, an unmarried mother. This wider interest is why we had the digressions into the history of North Carolina and into the current position of blacks in America.

In some relatively small ways the article was not quite as impartial as it should have been. For instance in this excerpt:

Civil rights activists, African studies professors, feminists, black community leaders and a lot of the stalwarts of the left that you find on any American campus have all lined up behind the victim and her claims.

Lacrosse team members and their parents, athletes past and present and various right-wing commentators in the US media hint darkly that the woman was either lying or had been assaulted before she came to the party.

-there should have been an “alleged” before the word “victim” and the picture of the stalwarts of the left lining up behind a victim is more positive than the “dark hints” ascribed to the right wing commentators. Still, the article does cite both white frat boys and black strippers as being the targets of “easy vilification.”

Now let’s move on to the account of the dropping of all charges against the Duke lacrosse players. (Hat tip: Terry Johnson) I thought more highly of this article than Mr Johnson did. It does make pretty clear that these men were innocent, unlike the pathetic grasping at straws (“We’ll never know what really happened that night”) I came across in some feminist websites. The facts are all there.

But it’s an unframed picture. There is little or nothing about the wider context that makes it a big story. The blogs and the media had as much to say about such issues as political correctness having overridden the presumption of innocence than they did about the individuals concerned. But with the BBC story, in contrast to the earlier one, it’s “just the facts ma’am, just the facts.” We hear that Nifong, the prosecutor, may be charged with witholding evidence – but not a word about why he seemed so madly determined to pursue the case long after the weaknesses in it had been exposed. (Winning an election and maximising his pension have been suggested.) Or why so much of the Duke academic community instantly assumed that their own students were guilty and went into candlelit vigil mode.

Justin Webb is quoted as saying “the charges had outraged many Americans, reminding them of the treatment of black people by privileged whites in years gone by.” I could not tell whether he meant that many Americans were shocked by what they believed to be a crime by arrogant white men against a poor black woman, reminding them of the way that white men could once rape black women with impunity – or whether he meant that many Americans saw the way that large sections of the university faculty and media acted as if the accused were already proven guilty by reason of race alone as reminiscent of the lynch law of the past but with the races reversed.

Neither of the two BBC articles I have cited has much wrong with it individually. Nor should the writer of either be specifically criticised in relation to the other – they were written quite separately.

My point is that the BBC has a strong but unconscious tendency to provide a frame for pictures upon which it wants the eye to linger and to dispense with a frame for pictures it finds unattractive.

that the National Union of Journalists passed a motion proposing a boycott of Israeli goods even while one of their own members, Alan Johnston, has been kidnapped and may have been murdered by Palestinian terrorists?

Adloyada quotes a source who claims that the editor of the NUJ’s house journal has admitted it was a quid pro pro for the support of the Palestinian journalists’ union in the campaign to free Johnston.

If this turns out to be correct, I can sympathise with their motives. But paying the Danegeld encourages the Dane to come again.

Back when US “shock jock” Michael Savage was fired by MSNBC (justifiably in my opinion) mention was made by the BBC of his right wing politics. (‘The brash, conservative Savage is founder of the Paul Revere Society, which advocates closing borders and deporting illegal immigrants.’)

When Rush Limbaugh was pushed into resignation (unjustifiably in my opinion) from the ESPN cable TV network, mention was made of his right wing politics. (‘The veteran commentator is also the radio host of the politically focused Rush Limbaugh Show … Mr Limbaugh uses the show to berate feminists, homosexuals and what he calls “environmentalist wackos” says he will not retire until all Americans agree with him.’)

There have been loads of BBC stories about the firing of Don Imus, too.

, Alan Johnston, may have been murdered. Adloyada has more.

Mr Johnston’s reporting from Gaza has been criticised on this blog several times. Some commenters have said that they have little or no sympathy for him because of their opposition to his views.

After 9/11, so many people said that if this or that happened “the terrorists will have won” that the phrase became a laughing stock. But there was a core of truth in that phrase before it was damaged by over-use. If we fail, on political grounds, to feel sympathy for and outrage on behalf of a person who has been kidnapped and may have been murdered, it is a victory for the terrorists.