Author Archives: Sue

Some say Cameron’s infatuation with Turkey is pure political expediency. Others say ‘I told you so’.
Some say his comment about The Real Islam shows naivety, and others think that these remarks are also part of a convoluted political expediency, some kind of strategical move in a long term end game which is in the national interest. Or in other words, he doesn’t really mean it.
But why did he have to make those remarks about Gaza? They have unleashed yet more virulently antisemitic comments from those who were only waiting for the go-ahead. So the gloves are off.

People who support Israel are horrified.

What is the BBC’s role in this? The BBC news webpage is dumbed down to such a degree that it’s difficult to tell. These days they talk to us as though we are a primary school class. Remedial.

The BBC has played its part through years of selective and biased reporting, and now we’re beginning to reap what they have sewn. Harvest time.

Israel faces a perplexing conundrum. How to absorb potentially hostile citizens into the population without a peep of discrimination. Until Arabs give up vowing to eliminate Israel it won’t go away. We face a similarly intractable problem, albeit on a different scale. You may or may not believe that Israel is no more racist than any other country, and very much less than many.
The BBC perpetuates the theme that Israel is a racist state.
Being labelled racist is as bad as being labelled rapist. Another story that has been subjected to the BBC’s selective editing is the ‘rape by deception’ case that is doubly newsworthy as it concerns twin topics at the pinnacle of newsworthiness, race and rape.

An Arab Israeli has been sentenced to 18 months in jail. He was convicted of the curious crime of rape by deception. An Israeli woman discovered that the status of the stranger with whom she had had consensual sex was neither Jew nor eligible bachelor, as he had apparently led her to believe; he was an Arab. So she went to the police, as you do, or in other countries, probably don’t.

The BBC presents this case on the web page insinuating it’s a clear demonstration of Israel’s racism. The very idea of sex with an Arab is tantamount to rape, they imply. Only in Israel could there be a law against rape by deception, only in Israel could there be a jail sentence for pretending to be a Jew, and only an Arab could be convicted of this crime, because if he was a Jew pretending to be an Arab, no-one would care.

In Israel this case has caused a stir too. Many Israelis think this law is ridiculous. That’s a bit like in tolerant racially harmonious Britain, where many Brits find certain laws ridiculous.
However, the story is many faceted. The BBC has spun it their way, and Edward Stourton on the Sunday Programme was taken by surprise when he set out to prove, in best BBC fashion, how racist Israelis are. He bit off more than he could chew when he interviewed Daily Mail’s Jerusalem correspondent Matthew Kalman. Off he goes:

“Let’s be absolutely clear about this Matthew, there’s no question that the sex was consensual, it’s simply because he lied about being Jewish that he is now convicted of rape, is that right?”

“Yes Ed, the Israelis are so disgusted by the thought of having sex with Arabs that they have made a special law that interprets it as rape, the racist bastards” he replied.

Only joking. He didn’t really say that at all. But Ed was in his stride, and continued:

“And in this case it wasn’t that he lied about his wealth or anything of that kind, or indeed the fact that he was married which I think that he was, it was the fact that he lied about being Jewish when he was in fact an Arab.”

Hang on a minute, said Matthew, it wasn’t like that at all. He’s married with two children. That’s what the court emphasised, and that was what led to the conviction. But the law is controversial, and many Israelis, including the mainstream Israeli media sympathised with Mr Kashur the accused, and because of their support he now feels more a part of the country than before.

“Ahh!” said Ed, with a little wounded yelp or two. But undaunted, he persisted with the racist theme and asked Matthew to tell us all about the right-wing racist proposal for an oath of allegiance.

However, Matthew Kalman took the wind out of Ed’s sails a second time, patiently explaining that there is a perennial debate about how to define the rights of non Jewish minorities in Israel, and the new citizenship law might not even contain anything about an oath of allegiance.

There are several other non BBC articles about this case, and the fact that the deception was about the man’s race means it has a racial element. The usual suspects seize upon this and present it as a straightforward case of racial discrimination, but it’s clearly much more complicated. In simplifying this and packaging it to appeal to the audience-it-prepared-earlier, the BBC is only doing what comes naturally. Many aspects of the case are concerning, not least of which was the woman’s odd behaviour. But in this country some feminist ideas about rape have led to situations where a woman can allege rape if she simply regrets what she did last night. It’s a perplexing conundrum altogether.

In days of yore the BBC acquired a reputation for excellence. The world switched off their local news organs, suspicious they were being fed propaganda. They turned instead unto the BBC and they saw that it was good.
Fastforward and into reverse. It has been said that Al Jazeera is now more impartial than the BBC.

The lag between the BBC itself realising this and the media savvy public doing so has yet to be measured. What if Jeremy Hunt’s threatened cost cuts jolted it into reality?
When the BBC is less fascinated by anything Israel does, and stops poring over every fart and speculating about its malevolence we’ll know that time has come. Currently they struggle to report the intricacies of Palestinian politics, other than divulging that Hamas and Fatah are enemies. Hamas being baddies and Fatah moderates. But there’s much, much more to tell.

One year ago, August 11th 2009, Tom Gross urged those who work in the media to read his Mideast dispatch. Who knows whether Jeremy Bowen or any of the BBC Middle East staff subscribe to his blog or have even heard of Tom Gross. Judging by their output, it seems not.

At that time Tom Gross was writing about an eye-opening conference in Bethlehem attended by the Fatah General Assembly which, he said, was:
“woefully underreported in the Western Media. Instead, the BBC, for example, has been running yet more distorted reports about Israel last week, deluding themselves and their viewers that Fatah is a moderate party committed to compromise”

Mahmoud Abbas has persuaded the Western world that he is a moderate and a seeker of peace; but when he speaks in Arabic his rhetoric is somewhat different. He promises his Arab speaking followers a different kind of peace. “Resistance until the Zionist enemy is wiped out.” Even if such drastic measures were successfully accomplished, the hostilities between Palestinian factions and various other warring Islamic parties make peace unlikely. We should be told.

President Obama’s faltering support of Israel has emboldened Abbas further. One year on, things are as bad as ever. Abbas is still saying one thing in English and another in Arabic, which you’d think someone from the BBC’s generous fount of Arabic-speaking employees could kindly pass on.
The BBC is so busy criticising Israel that we don’t get to hear about matters which might broaden our attitude, such as the persecution of Syrian Kurds. Tom Gross said:
“I only wish the BBC and others would devote a fraction of the substantial resources they employ in the Middle East to not only scrutinize every little thing Israel does but to pay a little attention to the hundreds of millions of people living in the 22 dictatorships (and one partial democracy, Iraq) in the region around Israel.”

The BBC is forever urging Israelis to “talk to Hamas” and they spun the Ipsos poll to look as though British Jews agree. If every single British Jew did support direct unconditional talks with Hamas, and unconditional surrender to Fatah, or mass self-flagellation, it wouldn’t be any wonder. Unmedia-savvy British Jews probably rely on the BBC to tell them what’s going on just as much as un-savvy British non Jews, atheists, rastafarians, the socialist workers party, pole dancers, the women’s institute and Uncle Tom Cobbley, probably Abu Hamza, and all.

So Mr. Hunt. Get the scissors out.