Author Archives: Sue

The tidal wave of disapproval over Israel’s recent misadventures has taken on a life of its own.

The Joe Biden incident was interpreted as an insult, both to him personally and to the whole United States. People have noticed that the language used by the Obama administration inflates the degree of offence taken, mimicking Arab-style rhetoric where pride and honour take precedence over common sense. The unfortunate timing of what was primarily a formality over an internal matter was blown up out of all proportion so it could be misrepresented as Israel’s deliberately planned symbol of defiance, and exploited to camouflage / justify Obama’s emerging strategy of siding with Israel’s enemies.

If the BBC was interested in reporting the full story they would have explained that Obama has reneged on previous agreements between Israel and the US over Jerusalem and ‘houses for Jews’ and is making new demands for concessions from Israel while letting the Palestinians off the hook altogether. He has not asked them for any concessions at all and it is feared that they are thinking up new preconditions for talks about talks while the going is good.

The BBC’S expansionist attitude to the concept of ‘illegally occupied territory’ means it now encompasses everything captured in Israel’s 1967 defensive war, and they’ve got their beady colonialist eye on Israel as a whole. All’s fair in love and war, and in the BBC’s eyes, in war, the winner loses all. (this concept is exclusive to Israel)

While the press made an almighty fuss about the height of the Turkish Ambassador’s seat, the BBC is less keen to trumpet the snubs that Obama dishes out so rudely to those he regards as unworthy, like our own dear leader, and of course Binyamin Netanyahu, who seems to have been left alone in the White House to mull over a list of new demands from Obama while he went off to dine with Michelle and the girls. And would only come back if Israel’s prime minister said sorry for being a naughty boy.

David Miliband’s speech about the expulsion of the Israeli diplomat received a chorus of approval from MPs of all shades, and though he stressed that the issue in question was the cloning of passports rather than the assassination, the BBC doesn’t make that distinction.

Time after time people have been allowed to assert, unchallenged on the BBC, that the ‘victims’ of the cloning, the ‘British’ citizens who have been so wronged, risked being mistaken for terrorists. The final question on Thursdays QT was phrased strangely. Something like: “Is expulsion the appropriate penalty for an act of terrorism?” Dimbleby seemed happy enough with that.

In the eyes of the BBC and consequently, the public, Israel is a terrorist state, therefore Mossad, the IDF and whoever assassinated a ‘senior Hamas Commander’ are terrorists. Unless it transpires that it wasn’t Israel, in which case they’d be militants or freedom fighters.

David Miliband said the victims of the cloning woke up to find themselves ‘wanted terrorists.’ Denis MacShane on the Today programme bemoaned the fact that they had had their pictures splashed all over the papers.

Well, a) I thought the passport pictures were of the actual assassins, not the genuine passport holders, and, b) when the word terrorist is avoided like the plague by the BBC, why is it suddenly applied with gay abandon to assassins who targeted a scoundrel, doing what many other countries, including Great Britain, allegedly get away with all the time without a ripple. Is it coz they is (possibly) Joos?

See Robin Shepherd on the odious Richard Ingrams who has written more bile on this topic. Famous for:
“I have developed a habit, when confronted by letters to the editor in support of the Israeli government, to look at the signature to see if the writer has a Jewish name. If so, I tend not to read it.”

I have developed a habit, when confronted by articles in the Guardian or the Independent, to look at the signature to see if the writer is Richard Ingrams. If so, I tend not to read them.”

On BBC Radio world service yesterday Jon Donnison reported Ban Ki-moon’s depressing reaction to his Gaza visit. Somewhere along the line someone has used the word ‘medieval’ in connection with Gaza, language modelled on Michael Buerk’s iconic ‘Scene of Biblical Proportions’ speech.
This emotive word must have appealed to the BBC; it appeared again and again in various news bulletins.

Jon Donnison’s report contained the parts of Mr. Ban’s statement that were critical of Israel with particular emphasis on Israel’s denial of permission to import concrete and the continuing state of disrepair of Palestinian houses.

A news bulletin that was broadcast immediately afterwards included the bit in Mr. Ban’s speech about recognising Israel’s need for security.

The juxtaposition of these two reports delivered a perfect example of bias by omission. The exclusion from Jon Donnison’s report of the only bit in Mr. Ban’s statement that was vaguely supportive of Israel was highlighted by its inclusion in the news bulletin that came next.

By ignoring the matter of security for Israel, Jon Donnison’s report exaggerated Mr. Ban’s already biased condemnation of Israel and provided a fairly typical example of the way the BBC’s reporting meddles with public opinion.
Another small but subliminally emotive trick was the ambiguous sentence “Israel only allows in limited humanitarian aid.”

That could either mean Israel cruelly deprives Palestinians of sustenance by only letting in some of the vital humanitarian aid, or, with the addition of a comma or two, it could mean that it lets in vital humanitarian aid but nothing more; nearer to the truth I think.
***

Robin Shepherd invites readers to suggest a way forward.
Most contributors realise that unless Israel is confident of going it entirely alone, without outside support of any description, they need urgently to address ‘getting the message across.’
That would necessitate a massive change of direction from the BBC.
Firstly to allow the public access to full and fair information.
Secondly, to put a stop to interviewers behaving like adversarial inquisitors when they’re trying to bring forth vital and illuminating information from someone like the mayor of Jerusalem. Justin Webb was positively discourteous this morning. Who does he think he is? Jeremy Paxman?

I would have no objection to Justin Webb putting the other side of the argument to Nir Barkat, but first he must fully comprehend the background, get the facts straight and allow the discussion the breathing space it needed.

Robin Shepherd’s newest post links to Charles Krauthammer’s JPost article. If Justin Webb were to read that article before jumping in with his inquisitorial attacks, he might be equipped to conduct an interview with an Israeli spokesperson.

The power of telly is such that Delia Smith only needed to make a passing reference to some ingredient or other to start a stampede at the supermarket. If the BBC were to give more air time to people like Douglas Murray, and commission Robin Shepherd to make a documentary or two it might go some way to undo what has been done.
But people are being kept ignorant, and the puzzle is whether it’s through malevolence or stupidity.

The fractured relationship between Israel and the US was the second item on news headlines this morning, but by the next bulletin it had been demoted it to the tail end. Because of Hillary’s concessionary language it was downgraded from sensational “rift,” announced with relish,
( Paxman called it a ‘Crisis of Historic Proportions) to a grudging admission that both parties were making conciliatory noises.

Too bad for the Beeb, slightly less ammunition to chuck at Israel.

Today R4 promised an interview with Ron Proser ‘before eight o’clock’ but we had to make do with Jeremy Bowen speculating over the implications of settlement building, snubbing the US, and General Petreaus’s ominous warning that Israel’s provocative act is endangering US soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Not forgetting another insurmountable obstacle, the impossibility of expecting the Palestinians to lose face. The BBC accepts unquestioningly that this immovable impediment to resuming talks trumps all others. So the more demands the Palestinians make, the more impossible it becomes to resume talks.

The actual granting of planning permission for the new house-building is more complex than it appears. It has been made to look as though it violates previous agreements as a defiant and deliberately provocative move by Israel. But my understanding is that this isn’t the case.

“The key point is that there was actually nothing to apologise for, since it was explicitly agreed between America and Israel that, as a concession to kick-start peace negotiations, Israel would stop building in the West Bank although it would continue to build in east Jerusalem. Indeed, Hillary Clinton herself, no less, praised Israel for this agreement.”

“America has thus effectively unilaterally repudiated that agreement. In other words, this whole uproar has been artificially manufactured by America to produce a crisis with Israel – while refusing, astonishingly, to condemn the Palestinians at all for their refusal to enter peace talks, their honouring of one of their worst terrorists by naming a square after her, their violent attacks on the Temple Mount in recent days, and so on.”

Defenders of Israel always view these actions with dismay because on a superficial level they look bad. So it would have been better for ‘apologists’ like myself if this had not happened. Nevertheless, why should we just accept that reporting of everything complicated will be dumbed down by the BBC so that Israel looks utterly evil.

If Paxman knows anything of the subtleties of this topic he’s not letting on. He gave the US Assistant Secretary of State Philip J Crowley a Paxman grilling. Rude and ill-tempered. “What’s America gonna do if they build them?” “Why don’t you just say ‘build these houses and we’ll cut off your
aid?’ “ On and on and on. “Occupied lands.” “ Endangering lives of soldiers.”

Newsnight continued with a prurient film about a “child sex abuser,” in which it emerged, at the very end, that the seven year old abuser had been abused herself, yet until that was revealed they implied that she was a kind of freak who had become sexualised through original sin.

Disgraceful sensationalised treatment of both subjects, even more disgusting than usual. The BBC is rotten.