Category Archives: anti-Israel

The one that nearly got away

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Last week on Saturday Live R4. there was an interview with a victim of a traumatic event, typical of the ‘uman interest topics that characterises this programme. This one was unusual because the interviewee was survivor of the terrorist attack at the Munich olympics, Shaul Ladany, an Israeli athlete. Even more unheard of, the whole interview passed off entirely without a reminder of how evil the Israelis are – neither tagged on at the end, nor inserted in between. It was notably and remarkably absent.


It was premature to assume that was to be the end of the matter. They wouldn’t let it lie. Because this week, a listener, *a British Jew*, emailed in; (15.52) and from the hundreds of texts and emails that they reputedly receive during the programme, this particular one was singled out for transmission. It said that Israelis are always portrayed on the BBC as “eternal innocent victims,” and the Arabs as “irredeemable irrational terrorists”, and wouldn’t it be nice if for a change they had a Palestinian on the programme to explain how hard life was for them.

Would you Adam an’ Eve it? Israelis always portrayed as victims? On the BBC? Did she make a mistake and really mean Jews and the holocaust?

Does proclaiming oneself to be a Jew bestow special dispensation, privilege, authority, meaningfulness, that lets one say something so ridiculous and so inaccurate? And do the programme makers think her idiotic comment was either worthy or necessary to provide an antidote to one little item that was neither critical of Israel nor condemnatory of Israelis that had slipped through the net for once in a million years?

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Gorgeous?

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Something the BBC forgot to mention in its report on G. Galloway’s triumphant arrival in Gaza.

Quite fond of getting onto all fours…
“Mr. Galloway kissed the ground after crossing into Gaza.”
“I have entered Palestine many times but the most emotional of these is after the 22-day genocidal aggression against the Palestinian people,” he told reporters, referring to the Israeli offensive which ended on 18 January which Israeli said was launched in response to rocket fire from Gaza.”

Making sure they mention the genocidal aggression etc. etc., they forgot to add that Gorgeous was donating direct to Ismail Haniya, leader of Hamas

 

“We are giving you now 100 vehicles and all of their contents, and we make no apology for what I am about to say. We are giving them to the elected government of Palestine,” Galloway said at a press conference in Gaza City.

Galloway said he personally would be donating three cars and 25,000 pounds to Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya as he dared the West to try to prosecute him for aiding what it considers a terror group.

“I say now to the British and European governments, if you want to take me to court, I promise you there is no jury in all of Britain who will convict me. They will convict you.”

Galloway made the announcement at an outdoor conference in the presence of several senior Hamas officials, and his words were greeted by shouts of “Allahu Akbar!” (God is Great).

 

Aid for Gaza =Aid for Hamas.

 

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NOT ENOUGH AID FOR HAMAS.

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I listened to this interview with Nicholas Young, chief executive of the British Red Cross, on “Today” this morning. He was on to argue for more financial help for Gaza and to ensure that those pesky borders aree opened up to allow for the flow of all that “humanitarian aid” which the inhabitants of this moral sewer require. It’s interesting to listen him get through the interview without having to even once deal with the fact that the genocidal Jew-killers in Hamas rule Gaza and that Hamas are directly responsible for borders being closed and for IDF military intervention in Gaza ! It’s almost as if the Red Cross and the BBC deliberately obscure the reasons for the condition in which Gaza finds itself! But that could never be….could it?

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USING THE WAR DEAD

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One of my fellow writers, Mike Cunningham, over on A Tangled Web has picked up on a piece by BBC Newnight by reporter/commentator/Hamas publicist Mark Urban. Urban complains about recent damage by Israeli rocket fire to war graves, including that of his great uncle, in in the British War Cemetery in Gaza. Mike addds “I wonder why he doesn’t also go to Hamas and demand some compensation from them. Compensation for having no doubt stationed their rocket, mortar and anti-aircraft gun crews in the same hallowed area, thus bringing down the wrath of Israel’s armed forces when they finally decided that enough was enough!”

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Hey Presto!

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At least 400 BBC employees, goodness knows how many Muslims, Annie Lennox and several MPs declare their abhorrence of Israel ‘for Gaza’. They accept Hamas’s allegations without hesitation or deviation (but with repetition.) Discussions on the BBC reduce the issue to a simple contest; who is the biggest victim, and whose warfare is fair, and whose is a crime.

Squabbling over what is and what is not a war crime, over whether Israel should endure random rocket attacks permanently because retaliation would automatically incur the crime of murdering civilians who were, or were not, imprisoned in an overpopulated hellhole with no way of escaping; disagreeing over white phosphorous, accuracy of targeting, who is a legitimate target and who is a civilian, whether this or that was deliberate or unavoidable, and who is the biggest villain, is a road to nowhere. While all this has been going on front of house, behind the scenes something else has happened.

Slowly but surely, by sleight of hand, the BBC has maneuvered Hamas into the position of graduating by stealth as a fully-fledged legitimate political entity in the eyes of the public. The BBC constantly pleads “talk to Hamas” because not to do so would be churlish, since the BBC has, with its magic trickery, legitimised, normalised and humanised it. There is only one thing worth saying: Recognise Israel’s right to exist, renounce violence, and re-educate your followers. Agreeing to any of that would entail no longer being fundamentalist extremist Islamists, so what’s the use?


The BBC has made up its mind already because it is not concerned with history, geography or a piddly little existential threat.

However many Fitnas or Panoramas we are shown that tell us there is a fundamental incompatibility between Islam and the west, the media still stops short of connecting this, multiplied several times over, with the threat Israel faces. They don’t like terrorism when it rears its head here, but are unable to empathise with what Israel has lived with since 1948.

These arguments obfuscate the real issue, which is: why is Israel fighting? Why is Hamas, fighting? Why are Syria, Iran and other assorted Arab states involved? In this topsy turvy way, by not asking these questions, the BBC has manipulated public opinion to back the wrong horse.

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SO, WHEN DID YOU STOP BEATING YOUR WIFE

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Let’s be honest – Israel will never get a break on the BBC . The latter is institutionally pro-Palestinian and really struggles to disguise this each time this issue comes up. Earlier this morning, on Today, this was manifest in this item on (Sh)Amnesty International’s report accusing Israel and Hamas of war crimes and demanding an arms embargo against the Israeli state and “armed Palestinian groups”. No surprise there, I think anyone who has familiarity with AI knows that it is profoundly and sickeningly anti-Israeli but what interested me was how the BBC chose to cover this. It gave Gaza correspondent and donkey expert Aleem Maqbool the opportunity to glowingly propagandise on behalf of Hamas painting Israeli forces as homicidal monsters who deliberately target children before then switching to an accusatory interview with Israeli government spokesmen Mark Regev. I thought Regev countered quite well but the James Naughtie seemed a/ Disappointed that Hamas rockets were less effective than Israeli rockets and b/ Determined to ensure that the listener was left with the impression that Israel was the guilty party even when defending itself.

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Go With the Flow

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Anyone who is conscious of BBC bias should read Howard Jacobson’smoving piece in the Independent. Then read the vitriolic comments it has attracted.

Over many years the BBC has influenced swathes of people, who quite rightly and naturally, feel a strong sense of injustice at what they have been shown. All the BBC has done is to report what is happening, is it not? They have seen something happening and said “Hey, look at that!”

A friend was travelling back from some far-flung trouble spot. Sitting next to him on the plane was a journalist-in-chief. “We’re covering this newly emerging trouble” he confided. “Why then, are you travelling home?” asked my curious friend. “Well, I’ve set them up and told them what shots I need, why would I stay?” was the reply.

BBC denies antisemitism and bias against Israel. Its case might look credible if it did something to redress the balance. The recent Panorama programme raised the question of Islam’s incompatibility with the west. It was a small start. Memorable images are affecting and bound to influence opinion, and perhaps a number of viewers began asking themselves some questions.
Awareness that this kind of exposure doesn’t help Islam’s public face explains why images of extremism in the film ‘Fitna’ were the focus of such strenuous efforts to suppress and condemn them.

Most of the virulent loathing expressed by Israel-haters demonstrates huge factual ignorance and misunderstanding by the public. The underdog theory falls apart when you know the geography, the stolen land theory falls apart when you know the history, and the deliberate baby-killing theory falls apart when you know the facts.
I believe there smoulders an undeniable suspicion and dislike of Jews in Britain, always ready to reignite at the smallest spark. But I wait for the day when the BBC commissions a programme, informative, educational and entertaining, that sets the record straight. I fear I’ll be waiting a very long time.
MPs need to be very determined and steadfast to get where they are, and no doubt high ranking BBC executives and commissioning editors do too, but they still need other people’s approval to keep them in power. They have deliberately or accidentally ‘set up the shots’ over many many years. Now the current is so strong, who is going to risk swimming against it?

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A TOUGH ROCKET RESPONSE

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Interesting to read how the BBC presents the news that Hamas has fired more rockets into Israel, in this case landing between two nursery schools in the Eshkol region of southern Israel. The headline is “Israel vows tough rocket response” and launches (if you’ll pardon the pun) into a quote from Ehud Olmert vowing a “disproportionate” response to these “rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza.” Oh, those war mongering Jews! All the time, the BBC chooses to present this as a war between Israel and Gaza. In this way, the savages in Hamas get a free pass. Lord knows how the BBC will react in just over a week’s time when Israel goes to the polls and the prospect of a Netanyahu adminisatration looms! We’ll all be Hamas then!

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DON’T MENTION THE WAR!

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The BBC casually reports that a “Gaza rocket hits south Israel.” Oh really? Isn’t that a wonderfully innocuous way of revealing that Hamas is still trying to murder those pesky Jews, even during a so-called “cease-fire” (Hudna). The BBC is quick to add that both sides have “violated” the cease-fires, so suggesting an equivalence where none such exists. Hamas has shown bad faith, as one might expect, and is still enthusiastically targeting innocent Israeli people and when Israel dares to respond to this it is then declared to be as bad as Hamas.

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