Author Archives: Sue

Broken Promise

By | | ,
31 Comments

After watching the first two episodes of “The Promise” on Channel Four, I was sure Peter Kosminsky’s advertising-savvy, cinematographic trickery would whip the audience into a passionate frenzy of Israel bashing ferocity in no time. A few prematurely written rave reviews from predictable sources reinforced this probability.
However, halfway through the third episode confusion set in, and last night’s finale degenerated into farce, with what looked like a guest appearance from the bedridden old lady out of “’Allo ‘Allo,”(Will nobody ‘ear the cries of a poor old woman?) along with a risible Rachel Corrie moment as Erin bravely faces a Caterpillar as it demolishes an already blown-up house. “Oh no!” I thought, “she’s going to be martyred!” But no luck.

Left-wing Paul’s pensive soliloquy, something like: “We can do anything we like to the Palestinians; beat them, rape them, pat them and prick them and mark them with B; disembowel them, blow their houses down – and we Israelis just carry on swaggering, like the dirty European Jewish interlopers on Muslim lands that we really are” – evidently reflecting the director’s personal politics. I assume Paul’s ominous “Come back soon Erin, there’s work to do” has further significance. A sequel perhaps?

As if all that wasn’t enough, consider the interactive Q&A debriefing with the great man himself. Winsome looking Kosminsky reveals that he and six others spent eight years talking to Combatants for Peace and Breaking the Silence, consulting experts from the Jenny Tonge school of thought, reading the Guardian and watching the BBC so that his film could give a true picture.
An interactive participant called Leia, possibly some sort of comedienne, asks insightfully: “Do you expect a backlash from the Jewish community?”
There was I, thinking his wistful expression was due to stress from being on constant lookout for a targeted assassination by terrorists from the Jewish community. But no. Kosminsky was philosophical. I paraphrase. “Unfortunately we’re not allowed to criticise Israel without being accused of antisemitism.”

After the Tweets on the Twitter thread, further indications of imbecility amongst Kosminski’s fans crop up in questions such as: “What is ‘The Promise’ in the series?”
Instead of answering “The gigantic key, you moron!” Peter writes: “Hi Aisha. Thank you for your question. It has many levels, including I Promise to provide you illiterate cretins with a focus for all your pent-up frustration. Go forth and vent your spleens!! ….. promised land, Jews, nakba, catastrophe, etc etc.” (My paraphrasing again.)

‘Iman’, wonders if Kosminsky found it hard to put aside his preconceptions. “What a great question Iman!” No, Iman, it wasn’t hard to put them all aside because I didn’t have any in the first place.”
“Hi Peter, I’m Jewish and I thought it was one-sided.” Says Lucy from London.
“Hi Lucy. You would say that wouldn’t you. But it wasn’t, so there.” (I paraphrase.)

“What is your favourite bit?” asks someone else. “Gosh, so hard to choose – a Palestinian woman tries to prevent the IDF using her child as a human shield.”
What is he talking about now? He’s cherry-picked an incident where two IDF soldiers were convicted by an Israeli military court, and turned human shield-dom on its head. In fact the entire charade was made from a crudely tacked-together patchwork of things turned on their heads.
So we wait, with bated breath, for Mark Thompson to confront us with “The Other.”

If anyone doubts that the programme was an incitement, or to use the popular term a “recruiting sergeant” for antisemitism, they should simply read the warm review in the Palestine Telegraph. A resounding thumbs-up from “Journalist” Sameh A. Habeeb, with one small reservation.
Like the BBC, it was still too biased in favour of the illegitimate rogue Zionist entity.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

Democracy the Panacea

By | |
23 Comments

Before the Egyptian uprisings we were told that we in the West must support tyranny to maintain stability. After the uprisings we were told that our newly discovered duty is to oppose tyranny and support democracy.

Our government strove for stability by maintaining a harmonious relationship with “tyrants,” but now they’ve seen that turning a blind eye to tyranny was morally wrong, and universal democracy would be morally right.

Many people suspect that “tyrants” were all that stood between the fragile stability and the dreaded clash of civilisations. However, for the BBC and, it seems, Cameron’s government, democracy is a thing with magical properties. If it comes, lo and behold, it will turn the Islamic street into a secular wonderland.

Meanwhile, (as if we had any choice) we’re plumping for toppling tyrants and keeping our fingers crossed this will bring about liberty, freedom and peace – and abracadabra, turn the Arab World into the West.

No longer must we turn a blind eye to tyranny. Now our blind eyes are turned to the baying mobs chanting “Death to Jews” in Tunis, the stars of David scrawled on Mubarak posters, and the sinister signs of religious bigotry rather than secular liberalism that are emerging from the angry rioting crowd. The BBC’s eyes are the blindest of all.

Many people, apart from the BBC, think this is quite important. Should ‘free and fair’ elections materialise, and the Arab World democratically elect their governments of choice, and hey presto, should their choices involve the Muslim Brotherhood and its ilk, the glorious revolution will, with our blessing, have brought back tyranny. Plus an inharmonious relationship with the West, and lashings (excuse the pun) of extra insecurity and instability thrown in for good measure.

A reader has sent me this:

“There has been so much misinformation circulated that the Egyptians have not used their demonstrations to attack Israel.

The massive crowd (possibly over a million) is first incited by Sheikh Al-Qaradhawi who as part of his victory speech (following the resignation of Mubarak) calls upon the crowd to pray for the conquest of the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. The crowd goes wild. Al-Qaradhawi is the “moderate” muslim leader that condoned suicide bombing of Israeli civilians and advocated the murder of homosexuals. He is now banned from entering the UK after his last visit as a guest of the then mayor of London Ken Livingstone.

Shortly afterwards, the crowd erupts into chanting in unison “To Jerusalem we go, for us to be Martyrs”

So it may be true that the Egyptians were more interested in overthrowing their despotic leader than a Palestinian state, but don’t be misled into thinking that they are likely to set up a wonderfully democratic country with good relations with Israel anytime soon. How could they, if all they’ve been used to receiving on their TV sets for the past 3 decades are programmes inciting the hatred and murder of Jews.”

Our government and our BBC will say, ‘that is how democracy works,’ so like it or lump it.’ Our foreign policy would have to be slightly adjusted, our appeasement of Islam ramped up, and William Hague could stop defending Israel’s right to exist, a stance that looks more faltering and unconvincing each time he declares it.

If they believe that a settlement freeze will hasten the peace process, they must have little or no idea at all what the conflict is about, probably through misleading journalism courtesy of the BBC.

Logic says that anyone who accepts that the Palestinian Authority’s demand for a settlement freeze is a valid prerequisite for ‘coming back to the table’, should equally wonder what’s to stop Israel feeling that Arab recognition of Israel and renunciation of violence is a jolly valid prerequisite for the resumption of negotiations too?

How can anyone expect Israel to come to a peace agreement with neighbours who insist loud and clear that they will never renounce violence and will never ever recognise Israel’s right to exist?

Yet because of heavily slanted reporting, which ignores previously negotiated and agreed territorial apportionment in order to portray all settlement construction as defiant, and a mere land-grab, Israel is not only unjustly given the role of intransigent, swaggering obstacle to peace, it is expected to make concession after concession whilst its enemy sits back and waits for more Hamas-like Islamist-style democracies to load the dice more and more heavily against it.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

The Other

By | | ,
45 Comments

Several other bloggers are alarmed at the recent tidal wave of films and documentaries we’re being bombarded with, which subtly or overtly misrepresent Israel. Many have been brought to us by the BBC, but the most seductively beguiling of them all is on Channel Four. On last night’s Newsnight, in a wider discussion on the role of the media, I heard Mark Thompson say that BBC is obliged to “confront people with the other.”

In the light of that, I feel justified in explaining why I find The Promise so disturbing, and why I feel that under the principle of confronting people with “the other”, it’s high time the BBC made and aired a programme that shows Israel in a truer, fairer light.

After Louis Theroux, Michael Morpurgo, and some upcoming radio plays which have clear anti Israel agendas, I suspect that as far as Israel is concerned, the BBC may not even be aware that there is an “other”.
A state of emergency should be declared.

Peter Kosminsky has spent several years, some say eight, some ten, devising and incubating this drama. He uses his considerable cinematographic skills to produce a slick advertising-savvy film with an agenda that subliminally and openly reconfirms what many think they already know about the Israel Palestine conflict. Namely: ‘Rich European Jews are transplanted into Muslim Lands by the British in a blundering attempt to atone for the holocaust, with the unintended consequence of penalising the innocent indigenous Arab population.’

The filmmaker has so far used two cheap tricks to mimic balance. One. Gratuitously and voyeuristically-inserted ‘real’ footage of emaciated concentration camp corpses. Two. A cafe suicide bombing in which two of the characters we’re following are injured. These two devices represent Israel’s case for the defence, while everything else represents the case for the prosecution.

Rich, heartless Jews versus poor, noble Palestinians; the giant key symbolising the right of return; left wing, European-born Israelis; checkpoints, the wall, stolen land, brutal Israeli soldiers, heroic, wronged Palestinian schoolgirls, Jewish terroism, stony-faced settlers.

Peter Kosminsky has even turned reality completely on its head! The stone-throwing children were not Palestinian, but Israeli! The Israeli hostess calls Palestinians ‘animals’ when Kosminsky really ought to have known that it’s Jews that are the desendants of pigs and apes. Ruthless Zionists tarred and feathered the female spy as a bluff to make our hero trust her. And though terrorism is the current method of resistance of the Muslims, it was brought to you first by Jews; and guess who were ‘put into prison camps’ by the Jews.

All this, and still one episode to go. But these things have all been done before, though perhaps less slickly and perhaps less seductively.

The website indicates that Kosminsky hopes to introduce a wider audience to the Palestinian cause. They are to learn the “truth” Kosminsly-style, through drama.
Comments, tweets, and even a liveblog, which Kosminsky himself has graced with his interactive presence, are all provided on the website. The gullible media addicts have tweeted and texted their appreciation in droves. They were captivated, amazed, thrilled, and ever so grateful that the hitherto mystifying Israel / Palestine conflict has been set out in technicolour for easypeasy digestion, painlessly and enchantingly.
What is alarming is that this advertising propaganda masquerades as enlightenment.
Kosminsky, far from trying to warn people that his partisan film isn’t a substitute for a fully comprehensive education, graciously accepts the plaudits. Lindsey (No I am not an anti-Semite) Hilsum provides a handy Potted Political History. Comments pointing to the omissions and obfuscations therein are dismissed by a Channel Four spokesman – because Lindsey Hilsum is an expert, so there.
I know it’s not part of my remit to comment on Channel Four business, so, if only because of the BBC’s obligation to confront people with “the other”, I rest my case.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

Party Political Broadcast…

By | |
39 Comments

…on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood.
A major party political broadcast on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood has appeared on the BBC website.
The BBC are committed followers of the Brotherhood, but any indecisives reading this effusive promo should have their lingering doubts swept clean away.

“Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood promotes moderate path.” says the BBC, so it must be so.
“The Muslim Brotherhood runs hospitals, schools, banks, community centres, and facilities for the disabled in cities and towns all over the country.” the BBC’s Tarik Kafala gushes. There follows a lengthy endorsement that no hard-hearted cynic could fail to fall for, except those of us who fail to fall for it.

“The Farouk Hospital is clean and it works, its corridors bustling with poor and middle class Egyptians.
It is a noticeably Islamic institution; framed Koranic verses hang on the walls; the many women there, patients and employees, wear colourful headscarves and conservative clothes.”

Wow. Spread the good news!
Funny how some political outfits can’t shake off their antisemitic histories, but with one fell swoop the Brotherhood can reinvent itself as benevolent, organised and good natured.

“With its conservative Islamist agenda and its historical links to radical and sometimes violent groups, it is feared and mistrusted in the West and to some extent in Egypt.”

But please don’t let that put you off.

“The worry about us in the West is the result of bias and double standards,” Dr Arian says.”
“the hospital is “non-political and non-profit making, and we offer our medical services without consideration to gender, race or religion”.
Such hospitals are the cutting edge of the Muslim Brotherhood’s much-vaunted social services.”

As well as being misunderstood, the poor Brotherhood is also hard done by.

“The Brotherhood, still banned in Egypt, is beginning its campaign to be recognised as a formal political party. It is assumed to be Egypt’s best organised and most popular opposition movement.”

They said all that about Hamas before they murdered most of the opposition. But they were democratically elected, which is just what we in the West are keen to encourage.
The Christians were a bit worried, says the article, near the end, but they’re hoping for the best.
So, VOTE VOTE VOTE Muslim Brotherhood.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

We Are All Freedom Fighters Now.

By | | ,
24 Comments

The BBC views the eruptions throughout the Arab World as one homogeneous, righteous, peoples’ call for democracy. To them ‘democracy’ can only mean ‘Western Style’ democracy. Legitimate doubts about that are brushed aside because journalists are too busy identifying with the protesters.

If the Egyptian protesters ever get their fair and free elections, it’s predicted that the Muslim Brotherhood will play a prominent role. No doubt the BBC would collectively shrug and say that’s democracy. If a Hamas style regime is elected, they’d insist the people must have what they want, even if it means kissing goodbye to freedom and cuddling up to Iran.

Daniel Greenfield expresses an alternative view, one which many people share, and one which others might like to hear about.

“Few of the gullible Western supporters who follow the revolution by Twitter, understand just how much the ordinary Egyptian taking part in the protests hates them. Behind all the English language signs produced for the foreign press and the articulate bloggers cultivated by the US and EU governments, is the angry mob who believes that Mubarak was a puppet of the CIA and the Mossad. “

Even if the BBC disagrees, it has an obligation to acknowledge that these views exist.
The way the BBC views the serious sexual attack on CBS reporter Lara Logan is not quite the same as his. Katie Connolly’s article and Daniel Greenfield’s are quite different. The BBC explains that reporting has become increasingly dangerous, even more so for women who face violent sexual assaults and rapes.

“BBC world news editor Jon Williams, noting the horror of Ms Logan’s ordeal, says that managing the risks of conflict reporting is a complex challenge.”

That’s conflict reporting in general. But Lara Logan was in Tahrir Square, amongst protesters who were calling for democracy, and she was on their side. Surely, they were righteous protesters who wanted western style freedom, were they not?

“The only popular cause in the Muslim world is fought against the Americans– even when the Americans are on their side”

says Daniel Greenfield

“Sexual violence is also a routine part of Egyptian mob scenes. In 2006, a crowd celebrating Eid Al-Fitr began assaulting every woman in sight. In 2009 alone, the UK foreign office reported handling nearly 30 cases of sexual assault against British nationals. Under Islamic mores, non-Muslim women are treated as whores. That may be why according to a 2008 study, only 68 percent of Egyptian women complained of being harassed on a daily basis, while 98 percent of foreign women did. When a group of jubilant enthusiasts of democracy found themselves near a Western female reporter without police supervision, what followed was absolutely horrible and terribly inevitable. It is what 98 percent of foreign women in Egypt risk encountering every day.”

Over in BBC land, it’s a different story.

“In many places women are treated far better than men,” Mr Williams says, recalling that BBC world affairs editor John Simpson became one of the first foreign reporters to enter Afghanistan in 2001 after crossing the border disguised as a woman.”

And very fetching he must have looked too. In his burkha.
Daniel Greenfield again:

“The cries of “Yahood, Yahood” or “Jew, Jew” reportedly shouted at CBS’s Logan while she was being sexually assaulted, reflect two things. Yahood is a common insult in the Middle East.[..]The negative depiction of Jews is rooted in the Koran, making it ubiquitous through the Muslim world.”

“The other aspect of it however is the prevalence of conspiracy theories throughout the Arab Muslim world. In Egypt, Nazi propaganda merged with traditional Islamic beliefs to give rise to Islamofascist organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood. While Mein Kampf and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are given little credibility in civilized nations– they are still highly popular in the Muslim world.”

The BBC isn’t bothering about all that antisemitic nonsense. Keep sending women to conflict areas, they advise. As long as they put on a burkha, carry a rape whistle, and stick a chair in front of the door, and if that fails:

“urinate, vomit or defecate on yourself”

– preferably not while reporting live on the telly.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

Kites for Peace

By | | ,
15 Comments

In the last couple of days there has been an extraordinary mish-mash of television on the subject of Islam and Israel. All but one sanitising Islam and denigrating Israel.
For example, yesterday’s hostile portrait of Geert Wilders BBC2 seen through thick-lensed left-wing specs. The filmmaker’s agenda was showing – almost embarrassingly – so hopefully no-one will have been persuaded to change their minds on the issue from watching it. One thing that stood out was the way the filmmaker saw Israel. He assumed that just a slight association with it was enough to turn Wilders into a villain. And the bit where he approached Wilders with his furry microphone, feebly bleating something unintelligible while Wilders and entourage swept past, then “See! He wouldn’t speak to me!” I found that hilarious.
Straight away, most people will have switched on to Dispatches Channel 4 for the Islamic Schools programme. I thought they were trying to stretch a tiny bit of material too far – they kept repeating bits of it – they should have concentrated more on the Ofsted inspectors, and asked why nobody seemed to suspect anything or care. Melanie Phillips has this.
Nevertheless, these contrasting items provide a good example of the art of television, showing how it can make you think one thing one minute, and another, the next.
Which brings me to the major four-parter on Channel 4, The Promise. The director has a left wing agenda, and he tries to pretend he hasn’t. Take a look at the website, see Lindsay Hilsum’s potted history which leaves out the important bits, read some of the tweets and comments, and weep. The audience thinks they’re being educated.

Then for desert, last night’s Newsnight with Michael Morpurgo. He’s been to Gaza, and he’s got it into his head that Israelis target children. It’s so firmly embedded in his brain that even though Paxman says “the Israelis don’t go in to deliberately target children” , and he admits that “It’s not that they they’re targeted”, it still pops back in a few seconds later, when he says “You can’t achieve peace by targeting children.”
Call me cynical, but I think I know whose side he’s on. Even Paxo had a tiny go at him, reminding him of the traumas suffered by Sderot children. Louise Ellman did well, but she missed a few opportunities. Of the malnutrition he witnessed – not caused by the blockade of course – she should have pointed out the lorryloads of goods that go into Gaza every day, not to mention the international aid that pours in. Where is it all? She should have mentioned the hate that is taught to the children, not in Israel, but in Gaza.

I wondered why the donkey cart with the allegedly injured child rushed past at the exact moment they were filming. But Pallywood makes you cynical. I’d also like to know exactly what the Israelis had to say about targeting children. Of course, as Jeremy Bowen would say, they’d be partial, so we shouldn’t believe them, which makes rather a mockery out of all reporting. The BBC could just get ‘impartial’ people to speculate, and stop bothering to verify or investigate anything. That’s what they already do on the telly, some broadcasters more than others.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

Easy Come Easy Go

By | |
14 Comments

Don’t for one minute think anyone can get an intelligent, nuanced analysis of the situation in the Middle East from the BBC, despite the endless chatter.
Islamic organisations like the Muslim Brotherhood and the Muslim Council of Britain are treated with reverential obsequiousness by the BBC, and to evaluate the threat of Islamism taking over the Egyptian government, or having a huge influence in Egypt and therefore the entire region, you have to look, for example, at Barry Rubin here, and here. The possibility of this happening, which would almost certainly entail the ‘removal,’ or attempted ‘removal’ of Israel, has been alluded to on the BBC with a cavalier indifference that beggars belief.

Ed Stourton presided over just such a discussion on Egypt on R4 Sunday with three specialists, including journalist and writer Carol Gould, who was one of the writers who alerted me to the full extent of the media’s demonisation of Israel and the Jews.
Also on the programme were Tarek Osman and Dr. Harry Hagopian. Ed opens with a reference to Obama’s iconic speech at Cairo – ‘reaching out to the Muslim World’. “Israel is supposed to be the only democracy in the region”, Ed opines, “but Lebanon also functions as a democracy.” I Beg your pardon?
After various assurances that the Brotherhood definitely deserves to play an important role in the new democracy, but that is ‘nothing to worry about’, Carol said she had been hearing some pretty alarming things on Press TV and Al-Jazeera. For example, the Muslim Brotherhood has promised that “the first thing to go will be Israel.” “This will be the end of the USA and Israel. They’ll be out of the region.” So, not much to worry about there then.
Carol Gould managed to remind us that Lebanon’s democracy has been scuppered by Hezbollah, and that Turkey is already a goner, but Ed had already stopped listening, because “we have to end it there”.

Only time will tell whether Egypt’s was a military coup or a straightforward people’s democratic revolution. If it’s the latter, however youthful the people are, or how Westernised they look and sound, no-one from the BBC has bothered to ask whether or not they’re actually of an anti-West and virulently anti Israel disposition. As for Tunisia, they’ve been marching on the Great Synangogue of Tunis. That should set alarm bells off about all of the freedom fighting ‘youth bulges’ in North African Islamic/Arab states, and the whole world.
The BBC? Tumbleweed.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

Being Partial

By | | ,
43 Comments

Attacking Israel with malice aforethought is one of this country’s favourite pastimes. From grave political misrepresentation emanating from MPs and broadcasters, to gossip and urban myth perpetuated by press, television, journalists and chatterati.

For example, a misdiagnosis of the PaliLeaks revelations is firmly embedded in public consciousness.

Despite being filtered through sources with infamously anti-Israel agendas – the Guardian and Al-Jazeera – the consensus is that the Palestinian negotiators were weak, cravenly offering everything to the swaggering intransigent Israelis.
This interpretation sabotages the PA, the peace process and damages Israel’s image even further, if that is conceivable. Without taking the trouble to ask themselves cui bono, who benefits, they adopt this theory and stick with it. Go Figga.

Swallowing this interpretation has a prerequisite., which boils down to believing that Israel is simply wrong. Wrong to defend itself, wrong to be Jewish and wrong to be in Muslim Lands.

Imagine, if you will, that Israel’s deputy foreign minister was a nice chap. Imagine that he applauded what the Egyptian people have been striving for. Imagine, as if your imagination was huge and boundless, that this man was Danny Ayalon, and you saw that he was good, and fair, and personable, and without a nasty foreign accent. Then suspend your disbelief, and with a gigantic effort imagine that John Humphrys didn’t interrupt this, this, this…silver-tongued trickster. This is getting too much.
Snap! You’re back in the room.

Here comes Jeremy Bowen. He couldn’t believe it either. “Of course you’re getting a partial view” he spluttered, because he hadn’t got a leg to stand on.

Imagine! Jeremy Bowen accusing someone of having a partial view!
Laugh?
No, not really. Jeremy Bowen simply believes Israel is wrong. Wrong to defend itself, wrong to be Jewish and wrong to exist.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.