Category Archives: anti-Israel

Undermining Peace

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The latest settlement announcements regarding Gilo have already been widely condemned as a provocation by people with no knowledge of history or geography. But there’s more to this than meets the eye.

“Gilo is a neighbourhood of Jerusalem, which is Israel’s eternal capital. Under many internationally-agreed final-status agreements, including the Clinton Parameters, the neighbourhood would remain a part of Israel.”

The BBC is ramping up its Israel-bashing again. Anything I/P related is being twisted and spun furiously. It’s as though after the unilateral bid the BBC wants to inflame the situation as much as possible, and maybe they’re hoping articles which use words such as ‘anger’, ‘provocation’ and ‘undermining trust’ will incite Israel-haters into such a frenzy that they’ll pressurise the EU or Nato to intervene ‘to protect civilians’.
Best friends Catherine Ashton and Hillary Clinton will probably issue some more pearls of wisdom for the BBC to quote in tomorrow’s episode of the BBC’s anti Israel campaign.

They’ve completely rewritten the ‘obstacle to peace’ scenario. You never hear anything about Palestinian ‘obstacles’, such as their openly expressed aspiration – not to any future peaceful coexistence – but to a future without Israel altogether, symbolised in their logo map, which blatantly depicts the whole of Israel as their future Palestinian state.

If the Israelis took a leaf out of Abbas’s book and produced strings of preconditions before negotiations can resume, the press might respect them more. Obviously being reasonable doesn’t do the trick, and they couldn’t spin against Israel much more than they already do.
The Israelis should demand that to tempt them back to the table the Palestinians must release Gilad Shalit, recognise Israel, renounce violence, hold another election, stop dreaming about the ROR, stop brainwashing their children, rein in stone-throwing adolescents, stop smuggling weapons into Gaza, stop sending rockets into Israel, and stop rewarding families of martyrs and suicide bombers.
Just for a start. Then, perhaps, recognition of gay rights in Gaza and a chorus or two of All You Need is Love at the next UN convention.

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Knell’s Toll

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Yolande Knell has taken sides. In Knell’s eyes, and in the eyes of most of the BBC’s Middle East staff, Israel’s existence automatically places it in the wrong.
An unpleasant article in the Independent by Christina Patterson drifted into stormy waters not so long ago because it characterised London’s Jews as boorish freaks. She managed to dig herself even deeper in a follow-up article entitled “How I was smeared as an antisemite”.
Well, I’ve had a look at Yolande Knell’s output, and as far as impartiality is concerned, she also sails close to the wind. But she represents the BBC, which Patterson does not.

Every one of Knell’s pieces is angled from the Palestinian / Arab perspective.
For example on 26th August, a vehicle for showcasing the tally of militants killed by Israel appeared, entitled “Militant Groups in Gaza Agree to a second Israel Truce’.
On 8th September, ‘Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood faces fresh political fight’ arrived. It portrays the Muslim Brotherhood as a relatively moderate group who have disavowed violence, and whose banner reads: “Freedom and Justice Party”
On 15th September along came “West bank residents split on Palestinian Statehood bid.” The split is echoed in the article’s two contrasting halves. The first predicts the paradise that will emerge from the forthcoming transformation, ‘when the international community will recognise our rights.’

“In the city it is easy to imagine what a future Palestinian state might look like. Palestinian police officers direct traffic on the newly cleaned streets and the shops and restaurants are packed. It lends a sense of relative prosperity and security.” Yolande Knell has turned into Maeve Binchy!

In part two, the mood changes. She descends sharply into misery memoir mode and the rhetoric is ramped up to full death-Knell.
“It is hard to imagine a Palestinian state here. “We’re under occupation until now and you speak about a state?” says Zayd, a Beduin. “The Israeli army is everywhere here and the settlers are everywhere – they’re armed and they cause a lot of problems and you speak about a state?” Unadulterated pathos and bitterness, with an undercurrent of belligerence. Orla, eat your heart out.

Now for the Patterson parallel. When she composed her ‘Judaisation of Jerusalem’ (Israel-Palestinian conflict writ large etc) article on August 17th, Yolande Knell didn’t feel any need to conceal her aversion to Jews. Her assumption was clear. Empathy with the Palestinian cause is a given, therefore entirely outside the scope of the impartiality conundrum. She took it for granted that the reader would accept that the stereotypical Jew is ‘over familiar’ – “swaggering” Jeremy Bowen might say. Her friendship with a high-profile Palestinian activist seems almost a boast, as does her mischievous urge to ridicule her young Jewish fellow-passenger’s preference for using the Hebrew name for Jerusalem by expressing her personal preference for the Arabic one.

“Land may be at the heart of the P/I conflict” she opines, ignoring what everyone knows deep down, but chooses to ignore, that really, Palestinian rejectionism is at its heart. The possibility that signage in Jerusalem will display “the transliterations of Hebrew names of cities”, the ‘Judaisation of Jerusalem’ hints, for Knell and her friends, at a cunning plan which threatens the Palestinians’ struggle.
After Benjamin Netanyahu’s terrific speech at the UN, where he compares the incongruity of this concept with the ‘Americanisation of Washington’, I needn’t elaborate on the ignorance and bias inherent Knell’s piece.
Drawing attention to place-names brings to mind the Palestinians’ deeply unpleasant habit of naming their streets and towns after terrorists, but such things don’t interest Knell. She recounts the conjecture posited by her friend Huda, the ‘well-known, energetic Palestinian activist’, that the Israelis are erasing all traces of Palestinian identity. Israel’s opponents frequently project their own foibles and conspiracy theories onto their enemy; the more ludicrous and malevolent the better. And as erasing traces of Jewish history and identity is exactly what Arab historians and archaeologists persist in doing themselves, Huda’s theory looks like a choice example of that psychological condition.

“The biggest problems arise in East Jerusalem – which was occupied by Israel in 1967 and is still a mainly Arab area – although Jewish settlers are fast moving in, taking over Palestinian homes”.
 Knell slips that in almost casually, though she must be well aware that ‘taking over Palestinian homes’ is an incendiary statement, undoubtedly phrased, deliberately, to cause outrage, especially as she doesn’t explain how the occupation came about in 1967, and leaves the unwary reader with the impression that it was a random act of aggression by an expansionist, land-grabbing thieving entity. Which may well be what she herself believes.

So, if the BBC’s reporters are allowed to be as overtly anti Israel as Mr. Bowen and Ms. Knell, where are the overtly pro Israel ones? The impartiality in their genes evaporated and left the building long ago.

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No Shortcut

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The BBC has a dilemma. Their beloved Obama has made a difficult speech. “There is no Shortcut to Peace”

“Let’s be honest: Israel is surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it. Israel’s citizens have been killed by rockets fired at their houses and suicide bombs on their buses. Israel’s children come of age knowing that throughout the region, other children are taught to hate them,”

Obama said.

“Israel, a small country of less than 8 million people, looks out at a world where leaders of much larger nations threaten to wipe it off of the map. The Jewish people carry the burden of centuries of exile, persecution, and the fresh memory of knowing that 6 million people were killed simply because of who they were.”

These facts cannot be denied. The Jewish people have forged a successful state in their historic homeland. Israel deserves recognition,” Obama said. “It deserves normal relations with its neighbors. And friends of the Palestinians do them no favors by ignoring this truth, just as friends of Israel must recognize the need to pursue a two-state solution, with a secure Israel next to an independent Palestine.”

The Guardian has decided that Obama is electioneering, and his only reason for sounding pro Israel is our old friend the Jewish Lobby.

Jeremy Bowen agrees:

The president’s speech was as much about the politics of his own re-election bid next year as it was about the politics of making peace.

Read his analysis, and despair.

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The BBC Continues To Lie About History And Censor Calls For Ethnic Cleansing

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Apologies for the lengthy title, but there are two issues here which need to be covered, and I’m combining them into one post. First, the BBC’s continued attempts to lie and rewrite history.

Q&A: Palestinian statehood bid at the UN

Most people here will know exactly what’s coming, and I know this has been covered here many times before, but it’s even more important to call the BBC out on it now because of the looming UN fight over creating a State of Palestine. For the benefit of those who don’t know the BBC’s bias about the “West Bank”, here’s the map they use to explain history to the public:


Notice on the left, the BBC is claiming that there was such a thing as the West Bank (i.e. Palestinian) Territory before the 1967 war. They’ve just erased a chunk of Jordan from history. As we all know, that was part of Jordan at the time, a country at war with Israel. Why else would Israel have invaded? This map indoctrinates the public with PLO propaganda, that Israel invaded sovereign Palestinian territory. Your license fee is being used to promote false history and anti-Israel propaganda.

Reality, on the other hand, is not Israeli propaganda. This map of Jordan – from a non-partisan source – and environs showing the borders during part of the 1967 war in question is fact, not fiction:


Notice the clear border lines of Jordan encompass the area about which the BBC is lying. Yes, I am accusing BBC News Online of telling a lie. I don’t care what some Beeboids personally believe about nasty old Israel’s land grab or the plight of the poor Palestinians or anything else. This is historical fact, and the BBC is lying about it. How can there be an honest Q&A about the topic when one of the answers is a lie? Until they remove that first map and replace it with an honest one, my accusation will stand.

Needless to say, this propaganda demonizes Israel in the minds of the public. Most people are seriously uninformed about the facts of Israel and 1967 and the “Palestinian Territories”. When one tries to explain the facts to get past the emotions, one is then accused of spouting Israeli propaganda. This is how the BBC’s editorial policy and style guide is blatantly biased, causing them to demonize Israel at every opportunity, although the BBC disputes this.

It’s impossible to have a civil discussion, national or otherwise, about the situation when the national broadcaster promotes propaganda for one side and demonizes the other. This then promotes anti-Jewish sentiment, but that’s a topic for another time.

Now for the BBC Censorship angle. Last week, Maen Rashid Areikat, the Palestinian ambassador to the US, said that there should be no Jews in a State of Palestine:

“Well, I personally still believe that as a first step we need to be totally separated, and we can contemplate these issues in the future,” he said when asked by The Daily Caller if he could imagine a Jew being elected mayor of the Palestinian city of Ramallah in a future independent Palestinian state. “But after the experience of 44 years of military occupation and all the conflict and friction, I think it will be in the best interests of the two peoples to be separated first.”

Actually, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard about their desire for a Judenfrei Palestine. He said the same thing a year ago. Not only that, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said the same thing last year, and went further:

Almost no notice was taken of another pre talks decision that the PA chairman revealed, as he announced clearly that if a Palestinian Authority state is created in Judea and Samaria, no Israeli citizen will be allowed to set foot inside.The PA chairman also stated that he would block any Jewish soldiers from serving with an international force stationed on PA-controlled land.

“I will never allow a single Israeli to live among us on Palestinian land,” Abbas declared.

Judenfrei, Judenrein. And the BBC has steadfastly censored all of this. Justin Webb didn’t bring it up to the feckless Lord Levy on Today, it doesn’t feature in any BBC News Online report about Israel or the Palestinians, and it hasn’t been mentioned anywhere else on the BBC. If someone can show me one single example of it, I’ll post it here, shocked but grateful.

Without the truth and all the facts, it’s impossible to have a rational debate and reasonable understanding of the situation. Yet the BBC actively prevents that, promoting propaganda for one side, rewrites history, and censors the Palestinians’ desire for ethnic cleansing.

ADDENDUM: Here’s Katty Kay interviewing US Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, in which Katty states uncategorically that only Bibi Netanyahu is the problem, and Amb. Rice corrects here. No surprise that this is Katty’s belief as she recently tweeted to her followers that this New York Magazine article – which blames Netanyahu and uncritical, “steadfast” support for Israel in the US Congress as the only obstacles to peace – is “All you need to know about the frosty relationship between Barack and Bibi.”

Why, it’s almost as if there’s a groupthink on this issue extending across the spectrum of the BBC.

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The Prophet Carter

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Octogenarian Jimmy Carter was given a lovely long spot on Today, with James Naughtie questioning him deferentially about his particular version of the Israeli Palestinian situation and his support for the Palestinian bid for statehood at the UN security Council.

They both forgot to mention the Palestinians’ continual refusal to recognise Israel or to renounce violence, and Jimmy Carter made, at length, a number of factually incorrect statements about settlements and various other things.

His prediction that a bid would succeed at the General Assembly, if not at the UN Security Council, was announced as if it was a great insight on his behalf. Perhaps he didn’t hear Jeremy Bowen stating something which we all know, namely that there’s “a built-in pro Palestinian majority, and no veto, at the General Assembly.”

Some of his remarks indicate that he thinks Palestine is already an independent state, so why does the BBC bother to broadcast his bonkers views on the forthcoming Palestinian bid for statehood?

Update. Melanie Phillips is wondering if the British government is about to vote for a Palestinian state.

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Getting Stoned on Islam

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Dear BBC World Service. I’d like to complain about inappropriate product placement in a programme broadcast on the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

An episode of Heart and Soul entitled “Muslim White and Female” was a 28 minute eulogy to the religion of Islam. Not once did it mention the unacceptable racist and violent aberrations inherent in its teaching. Even as an advertisement, which is what it amounted to, it broke all the codes.
“The Advertising Codes contain wide-ranging rules designed to ensure that advertising does not mislead, harm or offend.”
The advertisement for Islam broadcast on BBC World Service violated the advertising code on all three counts. It misled, harmed and offended.
The 28 minute-long unadulterated misrepresentation (falsehood) implied that subscribing to the product on offer would produce an euphoric state, which was actually likened to a morphine-induced state of ecstasy. So you can get stoned on Islam in more than the usual manner.

Most offensive of all, the programme promoted the views of a notoriously psychologically flawed personality with apparent delusions of grandeur, and who is known, amongst other things, for addressing rallies, specifically to incite antisemitic hatred, violence and anger.
A self-publicist, a would-be thespian, a person frequently caught on camera performing off the cuff speeches of passion in front of an audience characteristically predisposed to being incited into an intoxicated frenzied state; a baying mob, ready to forgive all the lapses in fluency and panic-stricken hiatuses when the oratory degenerates into slogan-chanting and frantic arm-waving.

Not one allusion to this was included in the misleading advertisement.

A newly acquired Arabic accent, and ludicrous gratitude expressed for the reforming nature of a religious fanaticism – apparently the only thing capable of delivering long-awaited maternal attention from a previously drunken self obsessed narcissist of a mother – added salt to the wound of a programme that was an unadulterated, misleading, dishonest, offensive, harmful advertisement for Islam.

The programme’s presenter recently won a claim against the BBC. “The BBC has not only admitted it got it wrong and apologised, but also held out an olive branch to Ms O’Reilly”

If the BBC is capable of handing out apologies for ageism, I await an unreserved public apology to all the listeners of the BBC World Service on the grounds of serious gross misrepresentation and falsehood, gratuitous exploitation of minors, advertising, and causing acute offence.

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John Humphrys explains 9/11, Terrorism, and Where We Went Wrong

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We don’t know whether the BBC has chosen its position on 9/11 and Islamic terrorism because the hierarchy sincerely believes in it or because it’s strategically pertinent, but John Humphrys set it out loud and clear in his 8:30 spot on the iconic Today programme. Tony Blair was also present.

  • 9/11 was a crime.
  • Islamic extremism is a separate phenomenon from Islam proper.
  • We exacerbated the problem with our ‘War on Terror’.
  • We should have concentrated on the criminals in Afghanistan and stayed out of Saddam’s Iraq
  • Eliza Manningham-Buller agrees.

In other words:
Islam is fundamentally peaceful.
Fundamentalist Islamism is a distortion of Islam.

9/11 and similar acts of ‘terrorism’ are crimes perpetrated by a minority, who have distorted (fundamentally peaceful) Islam.
These crimes have nothing to do with the peaceful religion known as Islam.
We mistakenly blamed the peaceful religion, Islam, for crimes which were unrelated to true Islam.
It was this mistake of ours, which radicalised fundamentally peaceful Moslems, turning them away from true, peaceful Islam, towards a distorted, ‘separate-from-Islam’ criminality, (which has nothing to do with Islam.)

‘Terrorists’ are straightforward criminals who have distorted the fundamentally peaceful religion of peace. We call them militants.

The BBC is impartial and non-judgmental. We don’t call them militant criminals.
We refer to ‘Militants’, or ‘militant Islamists’, meaning
‘militant ‘nothing-to-do-with-Islam-ists’.’

Earlier, someone said the glorious ‘Arab Spring’ is proof that we’ve won an ideological battle.

The news headlines state that ‘post-glorious Arab Spring’ Egyptians have attacked the Israeli Embassy in Cairo because of their anger at the killing of six Egyptian policemen by Israeli security forces. This apparently motivated their democratic decision to destroy the Israeli Embassy and its occupants.
It ignores the boiling hatred that has been driving the Arab World since the year dot, a hatred which was released and allowed to flourish and blossom as soon as dictator Hosni Mubarak was deposed. A hatred alluded to vaguely by the BBC itself in its own statement here:
”There have been protests outside the embassy for weeks amid a downturn in Egypt-Israel relations.” but in a statement further down in the same article, ‘for weeks’ has turned into ‘since 18th August’
“There have been protests outside the embassy since the deaths on 18 August of five Egyptian policemen.”

So, the anti Israel protests are merely because of Israel’s recent provocative, unexplained aggression? Or perhaps, since the glorious Arab Spring?

The glorious Arab Spring doesn’t prove any ideological sea change whatsoever. The Arab world does not love us. 9/11 was not an isolated criminal act by distorters of a fundamentally peaceful ideology. Nor was it supported by a mere minority. It was celebrated throughout the Arab world, on September 11th 2001, and as acts against the West still are, to this day, September 2011.

Tony Blair gets it, but nobody likes him, nobody listens to him, and the BBC marches on.
Meanwhile the Any Questions panel drones on predictably. “The whole world was behind America after 9/11!” “We saw Yassir Arafat giving blood on television!”(wasn’t he supposed to have had aids?) “It was our foreign policy that turned the Arab World against America.”

Heaven help us.

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Spy-for-Israel?

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Oooh look! Israel’s up to no good again! It’s been trying to buy
secrets from an American government scientist!
Mossad’s been trying to make him spy for Israel!

Stewart Nozette admits spy-for-Israel charge
See? See?

Oh, wait. It was just a scam. Nowt to do with Israel after all. Just some honey-trap thingy dreamed up by the FBI. Forget I ever said anything. As you were. Just the BBC screaming more stuff about Israel. Well, they’ve got to grab your attention somehow, now, haven’t they?

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Compare And Contrast: BBC vs. Muslim Brotherhood Edition

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It’s pretty sad when the Muslim Brotherhood’s Ikhwanweb is more informative and balanced than the BBC. Compare and contrast:

Fire and graffiti attack on Palestinian mosque in Kasra

with

Settlers torch mosque in Al-Mughayyir village near Ramallah

Both pieces talk about how this was a (misguided and wrong, in my view) retaliation for the Israeli Government’s razing of some illegal Jewish settlements in the area.

The BBC reports that the Hebrew graffiti threatens further attacks, while Ikhwanweb just says the settlers left racist graffiti. It looks like it’s supposed to say something like “Mohammed go away”, but my Hebrew’s a bit rusty and this may be vernacular. There’s apparently other graffiti not shown in either report, so there isn’t enough information to draw a proper conclusion about who is more accurate.

I should mention here that the Jerusalem Post reports something not mentioned by either the BBC or Ikhwanweb: the mosque was not in use, and there were no holy books inside. Unhelpful context, that.

Ikhwanweb, whose sympathies are not in question and who do not claim impartiality, report Palestinian eyewitness accounts that IDF forces abetted the arson crime, while the BBC instead reports rumors of the IDF training settlers to fight Palestinians. The openly anti-Israel Muslim Brotherhood reports eyewitness accounts (whether one beileves them or not, at least they’re trying), while the allegedly impartial BBC instead makes an inflammatory statement. There is some training going on, in fact, and the BBC uses this to plant the idea in the reader’s mind that the Israeli Government is actually responsible for this and future violence. Even though the training is for defensive purposes.

The BBC report closes with the required (yes, BBC, it’s required, and I challenge anyone to prove that it isn’t, and no whining about proving a negative: this is included nearly verbatim in every report about settlements) boilerplate copied and pasted from the style guide:

There are some 500,000 Jewish Settlers living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Settlements are regarded as illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.

Meanwhile, the more informative and balanced Ikhwanweb closes with this:

Since the incident, more and more Palestinians have criticized the Palestinian Authority which rules the West Bank, accusing security services of not fulfilling the ”duty of protecting the mosques”.

One Palestinian man Mohammed Abdurrahman condemned the West Bank security services for the inability to protect the mosques at a time when the services have effectively persecuted Palestinian resistance fighters in the West Bank.

No mention of this at all by the BBC. They’re too busy stoking up anger against Israel. And there’s no obligatory moaning about the number of Jewish settlements or legal judgments about them from Ikhwanweb.

One is tempted to say that the Muslim Brotherhood is more interested in accuracy and balance about the Israel/Palestinian conflict than the BBC is. Once again it seems that the Corporation’s editorial policy and innate bias cause them to demonize Israel at every opportunity, although the BBC disputes this.

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Keeping Watch

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I’m forever guarding the BBC’s output, day and night. I watch all channels simultaneously, whilst listening to radios one two three four five six and seven, and the BBC World Service.

Only Joking. I’m bemused if anyone has that impression, and quite flattered.

From the bits I do watch, I recognise many of the biases mentioned on this blog, but I find the anti Israel bias the most painful, and somehow the most insidious, because it leads to things like the incident at the Prom.

Palestinian Solidarity Campaigners committed a profoundly self-defeating affront when they disrupted the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra’s prom concert at the Royal Albert Hall.

Music lovers regard Zubin Mehta and Gil Shaham as the crème de la crème. The audience at the Albert Hall eventually got to enjoy the treat they were waiting for. First they had to sit by and watch while a bunch of nobodies who presumed they had the right to caterwaul and chant and drown out the finest musicians in the world, gave an embarrassing display of their insensitivity and ignorance.

The radio 3 audience missed out altogether. The BBC made an unfortunate decision to abandon the live transmission. However, when the fools were finally ejected, the performance went ahead triumphantly, to prolonged, tumultuous, joyous, applause.

The incident has generated thousands of comments on the internet.

There are four hundred and forty four on the BBC News website, and forty nine on the BBC Proms website, several hundred below other articles, such as Brendan O’Neill’s piece in the Telegraph.(689 and counting)

The ignorance displayed by some of the contributors is mind-boggling.

The Palestinian Sympathy Orchestra, let’s call them, is equipped with clichéd, half-understood gossip, myths and distortions. Helpfully, they nearly always set them out in full before launching off into the tirade proper. “Stolen land, illegal settlements, ethnic cleansing, diverted water supplies, bulldozed houses, white phosphorous, apartheid, UN resolutions, illegal this that and the other” they excrete, indignantly. Particularly common is: “Israelis are killing innocent Palestinians everyday.”

They *know* these things, and they use them to justify their largely predetermined hatred of Israel. Where do they get these ideas?

Comments also appear on Norman Lebrecht’s ‘Slipped Disc” webpages. Today there’s a contribution by famous tousle-haired cellist Steven Isserlis. It was submitted to the Guardian, and for some reason they chose not to publish. He begins: “The protesters who disrupted the Prom by the Israel Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta are not only guilty of cultural hooliganism, but are deeply misguided.” and ends: “To wreck their very rare and special concert over here gives a terrible impression of us all – haven’t the rioters done that already?”

You may as well read the middle as well.

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