Category Archives: anti-Israel

We’ve been despairing over the BBC’s Middle East reporting for donkey’s years, but it’s still pretty shocking to read what Israel’s outgoing press officer Danny Seaman has to say about the difficulties of dealing with both foreign and home-grown journalists.(Hat tip Elder of Ziyon)

Woe betide an outsider who joins in criticism of a beloved family member, because the same words assume a different cloak when the critic lacks intimacy, understanding or underlying affection for the subject.
However much one may deplore our current society’s mad morals or the leniency of our judiciary, running off to complain about these things to a bunch of hostile individuals who are vigorously pushing for Sharia or the end of democracy would not be the wisest move. Similarly, Israeli journalists should realise that criticisms suitable for internal debate turn toxic when picked up by ill-intentioned outsiders.

Too many left-wing Israelis, particularly recent émigrés from the UK, ferret out weaknesses in their new country and present impassioned articles to UK newspapers like the Guardian, which are on permanent standby, like a pack of vultures, ready willing and able to exploit every last drop. Much as both parties might like to pretend they are working for some greater good, the media’s misplaced moral posturing and the journalists’ betrayal simply amounts to malevolent meddling.
But worst of all is the foreign press. The sad fact is that reporters nowadays are basically ill-informed. They come with preconceived ideas, and are resistant to curiosity or objectivity. They know what story is required, and they are there to provide it. If they did not do so, their editors would find someone else who did.
Danny Seaman:

“Part of my problem with the foreign press – and I’ve been accused of being combative and feisty in fighting them – is that you have journalists coming in here not having the faintest idea of what is going on.”

“The narrative has shifted. They’ll adopt the Palestinian narrative. That has become the bon ton. They’ll talk about “the Palestinian right of return.” There is no such thing. They talk about what the Palestinians call “Israel’s violations of Oslo.” What exactly are they talking about? They have no knowledge about the facts.”

Israel has made many blunders in its dealings with the foreign press, and most of all this has resulted in allowing the Palestinians to triumph in the propaganda war. Anyone who doubts this should read “The Other War.” by Stephanie Gutmann. Reporters themselves and their bosses back home have already made up their minds whose word to believe and whose word to surround with scare quotes.

This could have been aimed specifically at the BBC:

“The media outfits that employ them are giving them automatic backing. And when the media doesn’t exercise its checks and balances, they’re failing in their job.”
…Israel is always active. Other things just “happen.” Missiles “rain down” on Israel. But where Israel is concerned, and I’m quoting from some media reports, they even adopt Nazi terminology: “Israel’s blitzkrieg.”

Always using negatives and very aggressive terms.

“By contrast, the suffering Israel endures is always caused by some obscure [force]. It’s never quite clear what’s happening, and who is responsible. The number of ways that Israel is depicted negatively is, astoundingly, much greater than with Hizbullah. Hizbullah is a terrorist organization! It is considered so by every country in the world, including the United Nations. [Yet I found foreign media] to be taking their word, their narrative as fact.”

Lazy, ill-informed journalists regurgitate myths and lies. The BBC was once regarded as the world’s most respected news organ, today’s BBC rests on those laurels.

My previous post was rushed to press in order to keep up with the rolling news, but there is more to be said. Bias by omission is almost accepted as a given, we breeze past it, forgetting that the BBC holds back a significant chunk of evidence it has deemed inadmissible, and consigned to room 101.

Politically incorrect things, unmentionable lest the illusory thought crime known as Islamophobia be committed. It is too risky to talk about anything that emanates from the immutable word of Allah.

Many people would rather not know what motivates the Arabs’ hatred of Israel. They blame Israel for constructing obstacles to peace without understanding that, for the Palestinians the obstacle to peace IS Israel. Some people say that Israel’s insistence on remaining a Jewish state is an inherently racist concept. That misguided theory is for another day.
The BBC always keeps an eagle eye out for fragments of news they can embellish to enhance the illusion that Israel is racist.
That must be why the BBC found Wednesday’s disturbance in Israel so newsworthy, while home-grown demos, some of which end in violence and vandalism, are played down or ignored.

For example a B.N.P. (I know, I know) Youtube clip entitled “The UK Muslim march the BBC didn’t let you see.” features a Hitler style rally in which Lauren Booth addresses a menacing crowd, inciting them to join her personal vendetta against Tony Blair and rise up against Israel and the police. She can be heard screeching inexplicably “We want Israel out of this country.” There are numerous examples of other rallies, speeches and treacherous behaviour on our doorstep which is far more relevant to us than a skirmish in Umm al-Fahm. Booth is a deranged self-publicist, but she has the backing of the Muslim world, and I guess her recent conversion to Islam gives her diplomatic immunity.

The BBC is overjoyed today because there is a disturbance in an Israeli-Arab village. What’s more, it’s a deliberately provocative incitement by a hardline right wing group, reminiscent of the Orange marches in NI.

Last year on a similar occasion a clip on the BBC website featured Katya Adler in a fetching baseball cap, ducking the occasional missile, saying that all the Palestinian residents want to do is live in peace alongside their neighbours.

This time, no Katya, but more of the same.

Meanwhile back on BBC News 24, we’re given the background.

An extremist Rabbi was murdered in Manhattan. His party (racist) was outlawed by the Israeli government. There’s a resurgence of such (racist) sentiments in Israel, and right wing (racist) Israelis are trying to carry out their annual supremacist march, provoking clashes in Umm al-Fahm, an Arab village in the West Bank.

There’s a handy reminder of the proposal (racist) by right wing hardliner Avigdor Leiberman, requiring all Israeli citizens to swear an oath of allegiance (racist) to the Jewish state.

Unfortunately though, the violence seems to have subsided, but the BBC is anxious to squeeze every drop out of the story.

But wait. Rupert Wingfield-Hayes is on the scene too. He’s saying there is an Islamist resident in peace-loving Umm al-Fahm. The BBC anchor is telling Rupert that the right-wing Leiberman and his ilk are after booting all the Arabs out of Israel. Rupert is attempting to elucidate. It’s not quite like that, he tries to explain. They think there should be a transfer of Israeli Arabs from Israel / West Bank to Palestinian /West Bank in a future Palestinian state.

But the BBC is very keen on tolerance. Obviously everyone everywhere should be free to vent their spleen, even if it means tolerating those who would happily stop you venting yours. Literally. So Israelis should be like us, tolerant and accepting of hostile groups in their midst. (Which they actually are) They should even be tolerant and accepting, as the BBC is, of the quaint and quirky (if a tad racist – it’s their culture innit) diktat that no Jew will ever be allowed to live in a Palestinian land.

Robin Shepherd has another well deserved pop at the BBC for revelling in Mike Leigh’s ‘message’ to Israel. Another instance of luvviedom meddling naively in Middle East politics.
After Ken Loach, this is even better for the BBC because apparently Mike Leigh can speak AsaJew.
Deep joy, as Professor Stanley Unwin used to say.
Not only that. It gives them a golden opportunity, which they grasp with alacrity, to opine negatively in the form of: one “critics say” and one: “some suggest.” Robin Shepherd expands on this, do read his article.

Serve a complaint robust enough to penetrate the barrier surrounding the BBC’s complaints department, if there really is a complaints department, only to get it batted back with “We think we got it about right”

A typical case in point concerns the Middle East coverage, about which Mark Thompson says “We get complaints from both sides so we must be doing something right.” I’m no statistician, but I think I’ve spotted a flaw in this logic.
Thompson by all accounts gets paid an enormous salary, so he really ought to be smart enough to realise that this theory only works if you start from the premise that there’s a perfectly balanced audience; not one that has been subjected to ongoing abuse in the shape of many years’ distorted reporting.

With a virtual monopoly over our access to information on the subject, our opinion on the rights and wrongs of the matter is in their hands.
Consequently the concerned righteous majority has become virulently hostile to Israel. Add significant Muslim input, and what do you get?
Answer: The BBC’s negative and biased reporting meets with the approval of the majority. They’ve become such haters of Israel that the mere sound of Mark Regev’s voice is enough to provoke a furious response. Indeed if a single, scare-quoted word from an Israeli spokesperson emerges, as it occasionally has to, people are up in arms. They are acclimatised to the notion that Israel is responsible for the whole world’s problems. That accounts for complaints that the BBC favours Israel. So, occasionally, when the BBC is forced to include a nominal “other side of the story,” some of the indignant anti-Israel majority will protest, despite having little justification, as in the Mavi Marmara Panorama.

The relentless bias against Israel constantly upsets the pro-Israel minority, whose justified complaints join the spurious unjustified ones forming a veneer of balance that bolsters the BBC’s illusion of getting it right.

If the pro and anti complaints received are roughly equal in number, that means the ratio (of objections to the BBC’s bias against Israel) from the relatively small number of pro-Israel complainants is, per capita, disproportionately high, which reinforces the veracity of the case for the existence of the BBC’s anti Israel bias. Have I explained that complicatedly enough? I hope so.

On the other hand, it could be that the number of complaints are not actually equal, but split, in the Helen Boaden sense of the word, meaning that there are a certain number ‘for’ and a certain number ‘against,’ whether the ratio is actually 1000 to 1, or 50/50.

Either way Mark Thompson and Helen Boaden are paid enormous salaries. A person on HIGNFY with a small head said Sir Philip Green was a fat greedy shit.
There is a type of consumer programme that’s designed to name and shame people who practice to deceive. One is called Rogue Traders, in which a dishonest rogue is lured into a BBC honey-trap involving, for our entertainment, secret filming of shoddy work and outrageous overcharging. Matt Alwright and a television film crew are filmed by another film crew ineffectually confronting the miscreant, getting their fingers slammed in car doors and being run over as the rogue speeds away in his van. The toothless anticlimax of an outcome, is that the rogue’s picture gets to be pinned up in the rogues gallery, though no-one knows where that is.
I wonder if we could get Mark Thompson and Helen Boaden’s picture in there, or perhaps name them on HIGNFY as fat greedy shits, and please don’t tell me the coverage of the Middle East is balanced.

Melanie Phillips has written an unusually optimistic article “Decency Fights Back.”
Her first topic is Robin’s department, and I’m ill-equipped to comment, but I do happen to have read, through links on the socially inadequate, pimpled , unmarried, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed-run blogosphere, two of the other articles she highlights.

The first was by Peter Hitchens (Daily Mail) about being imprisoned in David Cameron’s “prison camp”, and the second by Nick Cohen (Observer) on the mind(boggling)set of the authorities at UCL who can’t understand how Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab got those silly ideas.

The other hopeful sign Melanie mentions is a pro Israel demonstration that took place in Rome last week.

Peter Hitchens is no apologist for Israel, so if the BBC turns a blind eye to his personal account of Gaza and the West Bank, defending the impartiality of their Middle East staff will look even more of a travesty. As for the University College London, I despair.

The BBC has influenced generations of well meaning citizens to despise Israel.
Feeling impotent, they organise their outrage and demand action. Something must be done. Boycotts must be voted for. Trade Unions, student unions, self-hating Jews, Methodists and socialist workers all agree. Israel must be punished.
A rabble of pro Palestinian activists gather every fortnight outside Ahava, an Israeli based company trading in London. They believe disrupting this shop and the surrounding businesses will somehow help the Poor Palestinians.

Musicians who plan gigs in Israel are pressured to cancel. (Some do, some don’t)

The Methodist church recently passed a resolution to boycott goods that emanate from “illegal settlements.”
A Methodist preacher and former M.P. David Hallam is to sue the Methodist church for breaching EU laws against racism because he believes their boycott shows that they are prejudiced against the Jewish state.

The BBC hasn’t reported this yet, but if the Methodists make a big enough fuss about it they might. Methodists have already started blogging about it, and predictably most of them are outraged equally by the plight of the Palestinians and the expense of the the litigation, calling Mr. Hallam a megalomanic and such. One of the recommended links on a pro-boycotter’s website is to an article on settlements in the rabidly anti-Zionist Guardian. I hold the Guardian/BBC responsible for this misguided groundswell that is gripping the UK.

These ill-thought out postures are more about hate for Israel than love for Palestinians. If any of these BBC influenced organisations were to rigourously carry out their ill-conceived boycotts, there would be serious impediments to computing, phone technology, medicine, longevity, science, national security, technology and much more. There’s nothing like cutting off one’s nose.

Boycotts are only relevant if the target needs your patronage more than you need whatever you’re boycotting. That’s how it works. We’ll all be plunged into pre-technology days. Oh well.

‘We’ may not care if we cut all cultural, academic and scientific ties with Israel, but I’m pretty sure China would be delighted to fill any vacuum.

“The problem is, of course, Jewish settlements on Palestinian land.”
No. The problem is not, of course, Jewish settlements on Palestinian land.

Define “Palestinian land”, Wyre, please. What’s the history, BBC? Do tell.

I have a sneaking suspicion you want us to think that there is a racial group called “Palestinians” who have had “their” land stolen and violated by Jews!

It does seem that this “International Community” that you’re so fond of, you know, the ones who deem everything Israel does, or thinks of doing, “Illegal”
– it does seem as though it has some funny ideas.
For example:

“In most parts of the world it is not considered a disaster if someone new comes to town and buys a farm or a dwelling. Only in Arab parts of the Middle East is it an unacceptable affront for a Jew to arrive with plans to stay. And “world opinion” only accepts this sort of behaviour when it is the Jew who is being rejected. If a black person is denied the right to buy a house in the community of his choice, it is considered racial discrimination. If a Catholic can’t move into a Protestant neighborhood it is religious discrimination. And Americans, including Jews, are very careful to avoid any appearance of discrimination against Muslims. But if a Jew wants to buy a place to live in the West Bank, it is considered a brutal Israeli invasion.”

“By violently rejecting Jewish settlement, the Palestinian Arabs are exhibiting behaviour which is unacceptable, even despised in the civilized world. In this they echo most other Muslim countries that have a prohibition on Jews living there, where land transfers to a Jew can carry the death penalty. These practices should be universally condemned and rejected. Arabs insist it is unacceptable for a few hundred thousand Jews to live among millions of Arabs while Israel’s Arab citizens are almost 20% of Israel’s population.”

Isn’t it odd that the most vociferous complaints made against Jews by Arabs are those of which they themselves are particularly guilty? As the saying goes, “it takes one to know one” Or to suspect one.
However, this is not my point. Why, when there is much information to the contrary, does the BBC and therefore much of the public, insist on ignoring anything that sets out the other side of the story?
In any case, even if one were to just accept that the “International Community” was right all along, and there is a Zionist plot to take over the whole world, and everyone must stop this at all costs, has anyone on the BBC considered that not all of their precious Palestinians are sorry the freeze has friz.

I see Robin Shepherd has commented on Paul Reynolds’s “Core Issues” page on the BBC website. H/T David Jones, previous open thread.
I had a pop at this the other day on DV’s “Build” thread.

Robin Shepherd belies his own utterance, that there’s nothing especially dramatic to complain about, by saying that Paul Reynolds fails to recognise the ultimate core issue which is “the refusal of the Palestinian side to internalise the existence of the state of Israel as a legitimate nation in the world and to accept that Jews have a legitimate claim to their land in the Middle East. “

Seeing as ‘ow the BBC article is entitled “Core Issues” – and the very thing that IS the core issue is omitted, I’d have thought that was fairly dramatic. But not to worry.
What I am focusing on in this post is the slippery nature of the BBC’s bias. Of course its bias is not going to be visible to the naked eye! It’s recognisable only by those who are willing to put on the spectacles that necessary to correct their acute myopia.