Category Archives: anti-Israel

I listened to Jeremy Bowen being interviewed from his perch on Tripoli this morning on Today (8.10am). One of the issues being covered was what united the “rebels”. Jeremy came back with the official BBC meme that it is a shared hatred of Gadaffi that united them. But hang on a moment, there is something else that unites them – as evidenced here – but left curiously unreported by the BBC. I wonder why? When even Reuters can tackle a topic the BBC runs away from you know that you are in real danger of getting a very contrived and controlled narrative. The emerging Libya’s hatred of Israel may be much greater than that of Gaddaffi but the State Broadcaster may not deign that as a problem.

The BBC has written a report about the ruling that led to the conviction and subsequent expulsion from St. Andrews University of a young history student who put his hand down his pants and rubbed it on a Jewish student’s Israeli flag. His mate and co-culprit got off more lightly – he was merely suspended for a year.

Was this just a silly prank by two drunken ‘hey Jimmies’, which received a disproportionately harsh punishment? Or was the harshness meant to deter others who might be planning to express rampantly racist sentiments, which are currently bubbling up throughout our university campuses?

But there’s more to this than meets the eye. The Palestinian Solidarity bunch were performing their particular type of solidarity by providing a baying mob to boo and jeer at the verdict and at the Jewish complainant. But that’s not all. When the case first came to court in May, a cunning and exasperating delaying tactic was devised by the accused. What fun.

Who knows whether this irritated the judge enough to influence his decision to take the case seriously, and to come down on the side of the young man from the rogue Zionist entity, an act that defies the prevailing atmosphere (see judge Bathurst-Norman) amongst a section of the judiciary.

However there’s more ramifications to this. The young pubic hair-wielding fellow was not a “hey Jimmy” out for a drunken Sat’day night punch-up. He was a history student. A history student. Any fule kno that history can, and must be interpreted in more than one way, but I recall a lively debate on one of Melanie Phillips’s Spectator threads that was sparked off by a student at Aberystwyth University who felt he would fail his history degree if he dared to consider any other than the Palestinian narrative.

It seems that Scotland is a hotbed of Israel-bashing, what with the rash of BDS campaigns that have sprouted in places like Dunbartonshire, but as Richard Millett knows only too well, where anti Zionism is concerned London is the Daddy.

An aspect of this case that several people have remarked on is that pro Palestinian activists who parade their antisemitic slogans and incite antisemitic acts of violence and abuse see themselves as anti racist. The stupidity is mind boggling. Their minds have obviously been boggled, (and in my humble opinion even more sinister) not by the BNP, not by the EDL, but by our universities and academic institutions.

Oh yes, and our public broadcasting corporation. First they whip it up, then they report the consequences, almost feigning innocent surprise as though it’s not their fault.

A news Correspondent from BBC’s One Show has been Tweeting. This person. ‘one_uk’ describes him/herself thus: “Research Correspondent from the One Show trying to present a better image of the UK.

The frantic tweeting in question goes something like this:

”PLS RT Israel did to a 5-year-old Palestinian boy.He was killed a last night by Israeli air strikes.”

If this photograph is genuine, and similar pictures have been known to be ‘unreliable’ in the past, it’s very sad.

It’s an image of a young Palestinian victim, tragically killed by an Israeli air strike. Air strikes which the Palestinians themselves provoked by their own murderous attacks on Israeli civilians, including Israeli children aged four and six whose corpses probably won’t be appearing in any posed publicity pictures.

What the hell does a BBC employee think he’s doing letting him/herself blatantly perpetuate Palestinian propaganda without a care in the world while proudly advertising his BBC credentials for all tthe world o see. The BBC’s conduct in the latest outbreak of violence has already been heavily criticised.

War is a nasty business Mr. One Show Researcher, and the motto is, if you don’t like it, don’t start it.

P.S.

I really should have focused on the tweet to CiF Watch.

“You will realise how powerful the Muslims r growing through the use of media. Your Zionist tweets will show the world what u are”

If that isn’t explicit enough for your bosses at the BBC, Mr. One Show correspondent, I don’t know what is.

UPDATE:

I read in the comments that David Vance has been contacted by Heather from the BBC.

My sources have also been contacted by Heather Taylor and have informed me that she stated that the account “is not connected to us or an official account in any way.”

They still wished to know if there is someone who works for the BBC who may own that twitter account, and later received this assurance from Ms. Taylor:

“To the best of our ability, we are sure that this is not owned by a BBC employee. Twitter are also investigating this further.”

Oh no, I turn my back and what happens? “Israel pounds Gaza after attacks”. Those pesky Jews once again up to their old tricks. Happily the BBC is there to record that….

The Israeli military has carried out air strikes over the Gaza Strip, targeting those it blamed for a series of deadly attacks in southern Israel. At least six people, including a senior militant, were killed in the air strikes, Palestinian sources said. earlier, Israeli officials promised a strong response after attacks on vehicles near Eilat left seven dead. Israeli officials said Gazan militants were responsible, although Gaza’s Hamas government denied involvement.

Today’s Telegraph reports that Steven Sugar’s widow is to take on his battle with the BBC over the Balen report.

In the article a BBC spokesman is quoted as saying:

“If we are not able to pursue our journalism freely and have honest debate and analysis over how we are covering important issues, then how effectively we can serve the public will be diminished.”

I’m not entirely sure whether this argument supports or attacks the BBC for spending £270,000 worth of licence-fee money on keeping the contents of the Balen report a secret.

The other morning, when the BBC was on strike and there was no Today, I watched instead a film about the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, on the channel known as ‘Yesterday.’
The film began with the birth of Israel, and didn’t shy away from including Britain’s shameful cruelty and heartlessness in rigidly enforcing a cap on immigration by Jewish refugees to Palestine, even though they were known to have been fleeing Nazi persecution. It showed the ship Exodus with a cargo of 4,000 concentration camp survivors hoping to restart their lives in Palestine, being turned turned away by the British, heedless of the fate of those on board. It described the formation of the Irgun, and explained quite fairly the cause of their resentment against the British.

Fast-forward to the film’s focal point. The filmmakers had decided that Rabin and Arafat were partners for peace, both equally dovish and conciliatory, and on the brink of ending the ‘intractable conflict’ in the Middle East. Aside from a snapshot of the Grand Mufti’s notorious meeting with Hitler, Arafat’s ‘three nos’ and the intifada he engendered as he famously walked away, were conspicuously absent from the narrative, as was Islam’s inherent antisemitism.
Subtlety and nuance were sacrificed for the simplicity of the fallacious message that Rabin and Yasser Arafat were heroic peaceniks, while the peoples they represented were unanimously opposed to peace.

Yigal Amir, Rabin’s assassin, was portrayed as a rogue representative of the right-wing warmongering Israeli public, though a little more deranged; an extremist, motivated by a commonly held malevolent determination to scupper the peace process just so that Israel could continue sadistically oppressing the Palestinians. In other words, Israel’s own Anders Breivik, acting on behalf of the universal right-wing nutter fraternity.

The myth that Arafat sincerely sought peace thrives to this day, and his modern-day counterpart Mahmoud Abbas has inherited the undeserved mantle of moderate seeker of peace. In the Telegraph Benedict Brogan explains why David Cameron is a dupe, playing dangerous games with his Security Council vote. Netanyahu’s latest concession doesn’t interest the BBC, and neither do the qassam rockets that were fired from Gaza recently . As a Harry’s Place commenter predicted, only Israel’s retaliatory strikes were worthy of a mention by the BBC.
When one of the Fogel family’s murderers was convicted yesterday the author of the BBC web article felt compelled to mention Abbas’s condemnation of those behind the killings, as if to emphasise that he was a man of peace, and included, even in this incongruous context, the obligatory reminder that the world and his dog regards settlements as illegal ‘though Israel disputes this’, which smacks of the accusation that, for having the impertinence to be there, the family was ‘asking for it’.

Much of the British public clings to the sentimental parody systematically projected by the left, in which Palestinians play the part of the universal victim. Images of wailing women brandishing giant keys, mutterings about bulldozed homes, shortages of food and medicine, all because of the Zionist oppressors and nothing to do with their very own ‘democratically elected’ corrupt and venal leadership. The widely-held belief that Israelis are Western interlopers transplanted onto ‘Muslim land’ by interfering outsiders who who should have minded their own business, is alive and well. Pallywood seduced the BBC, and the BBC seduced the liberal left world.

The aid that Israel trucks into Gaza on a daily basis, the luxury hotels, the abundant provisions, the shopping malls and restaurants that are springing up, the virulent antisemitic passion that fuels the Islamic world, and the findings that a majority of Palestinians are opposed to the peace process and are of the opinion that Israel should not exist, are all absent from the BBC’s impartial reporting.

Anyone who wishes can easily track down Arabic television programmes, translated by Memri. They can see interviews with Nonie Darwish or Wafa Sultan on Arabic T.V. stations, Imams and preachers waving their arms histrionically, screeching infantile rhetoric that would be laughable if it weren’t as incendiary and hate-filled as anything that ever emanated from Nazi Germany.
If you care to look, you can watch clips from Palestinian children’s TV, and observe men in animal costumes implanting aspirations in the next generation of Palestinian children. Not, Mr. Michael Morpurgo, of peaceful coexistence with Jewish children, but of murdering Jews for Allah, and promoting the glory of martyrdom with all the gusto and advertising acumen of T.V.’s Mad Men in every sense of the phrase.

Yet the BBC has never shown any interest in that. Viewers, mildly interested in world affairs, but not enough to look beyond the BBC, are treated to half a story. Most people are baffled by the left’s ‘cognitive dissonance.’ Nick Cohen says, ‘of ‘the “liberal” press where I make my living:’

“you see them deploy two tactics. The first is a determined refusal to admit the nature of radical Islam. They never discuss the misogyny, homophobia and antisemitism, let alone stir themselves to confront it. Second, they pretend that anyone who does describe and condemn it is a part of the supernaturally powerful “Israel Lobby” – or the “International Jewish Conspiracy,” as previous generations called it.”

I have never forgotten the deference with which the production team of Any Questions treated Baroness Tonge. They had invited me on to the programme with her, perhaps because they thought it a bit of laugh to sit someone called ‘Cohen’ next to someone who had updated the medieval blood libel and suggested that an inquiry was needed to ascertain whether Jews were stealing the vital organs of Christian earthquake victims.”

In Britain today we have people expressing openly antisemitic opinions while enjoying respectability and a fully functioning public life, regularly given a platform on the BBC. We have anti Israel meetings, which purport to be pro Palestinian, where people are shouted down disgracefully; we have rabbles behaving appallingly in supermarkets and outside Israeli businesses and overt antisemitic bullying in our universities, yet the BBC, paragon of virtue and righteousness looks the other way.

The BBC favours stories that show Israel in a poor light, and holds back on the rest in a decidedly disproportionate manner. Because of events in Syria, Turkey now seems willing to resume normal relations with Israel. A UN report about the 2010 flotilla, which deemed the blockade of Gaza legal, and was generally favourable to Israel, passes by the BBC unnoticed, as do the somewhat bizarre attempts by both Israel and Turkey to modify the contents of the report, pre-release.
The BBC does mention another UN report, critical of Israel’s conduct during the war with Lebanon. UN special rapporteur Richard Falk blogs an antisemitic cartoon, which is ignored, yet Israel’s arrests of flytillistas at Ben Gurion airport are duly noted.
Which brings me to my final point. This fascinating interview with the irreplaceable Abba Eban shows that things have changed, yet somehow stayed the same. In 1958, nine years prior to the six day war, people in the media were already putting the case for Israel’s enemies, implanting and embedding the myths that remain to the present day, and showing that it is Israel’s very existence that her enemies object to and are resisting, aided and abetted by the Carolines, Rachels, Keiras and other BBC tweeters who display their half-baked 140 character ideas with such confidence and bravado. They have probably never even heard of Abba Eban, don’t know the first thing about the history of the Middle East, and are of a mind to overlook the peculiarities of the Islamic mindset and its inherent pathological hatred for Jews.
I hope these posts, which admittedly will swamp the site for a few minutes, will illustrate the ignorance, superficiality and agenda-driven half truths, which will be dished up for public consumption if ever the BBC monopoly comes to pass.