Category Archives: Antisemitism

Inspired by CifWatch, here are some What Ifs.

You know that Panorama episode where they set up a Muslim honey-trap scenario to highlight Islamophobia? Well, what if they made a Panorama with a decoy Jew to expose antisemitism like the Amsterdam police had to.

You know Alan ‘I’m telling your story’ Johnston, theBBC kidnapee that became a cause célèbre? Well, it’s 4 years on friday since Gilad Shalit was kidnapped by Hamas and the Army of Islam. What if the BBC marked this horrible anniversary by making a little fuss about his human rights?

You know the BBC’s fixation that peace will be brought closer by talking to Hamas? What if they suddenly realised that this was specious and delusive?

I’ve been very busy not watching telly, but I did accidentally stumble upon MEPs in Strasbourg discussing the Flotilla on the BBC Parliament channel last night, between the repeats of QT and Andrew Marr.

Needless to say it was an Israel-bashing jamboree, with left wing and green MEPs making their rabidly anti Israel / pro Turkey speeches.

They kept demanding Baroness Ashton ‘does something’ to lift the blockade of Gaza. Immediately! The conservative and centre-right MEPs were similarly receptive to the peace activists’ tale, but they sprinkled their speeches with “but there must be security for Israelis as well”.
It was almost as though they’d been informed, educated and entertained solely by the BBC.

There were some notable exceptions. A German Green MEP spoke up for Israel, and most supportive of all, and under the circumstances rather heroic, was Charles Tannock MEP, Conservative Foreign Affairs Spokesman.
But that’s nothing. What about the debate on the subject in our own parliament?
Louise ‘we can ignore her because she would say that, wouldn’t she,’ Ellman, Ivan Lewis and Denis McShane were more or less the only voices of sanity. Take a look at this gorgeous website, which has a tag entitled Anti-Racism. Are they quite mad?

What I’m leading up to is this. On Start The Week two ‘Jewish’ books were being plugged. One by Ruth Harris was about a scandal that shook France to its core – the Dreyfus affair.
The other, The Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal concerns a Jewish art historian, aesthete and collector Charles Ephrussi.
Antisemitism.
How rife it was in Paris during the Belle Époque. Jews being accused of killing children, for blood to make Matzos.

Tom Hollander’s family had a brush with antisemitism too. All the guests had a contribution to make on the topic . Even Andrew Marr. “Mmmm, Mmmm,” he goes. “What it means to be French” he analyses, sagely.

“Modern France too. All this argument about the burqua.”

So is Andrew Marr talking about “Racism?” “Islamophobia?” Is he saying that Muslims are the new Jews, or what?

I consider the BBC’s bias against Israel to be potentially the most dangerous branch of its non-impartiality. Part of the problem is that they start from a wrong premise, confusing moral equivalence with impartiality. That is to say they give equal consideration, painstakingly, to the views and sensitivities of “all”* no matter if doing so entails promoting the views of thugs, criminals, liars and racists, sometimes above those of law-abiding members of society. And they do so with a contrived “who, me?” innocence. A repercussion of all this is the turmoil we are experiencing now.

Another part of the BBC’s problem is their superficial grasp of anti-Semitism. If the BBC sets out to educate, it should first be educated itself. I doubt if anyone at the BBC would be interested in reading the enlightening essay by professor Geoffrey Alderman today on CiFWatch that explains the antisemitism inherent in Islam.
He had to write such a thing because of the ignorance and bias shown by employees of the BBC’s Siamese twin newspaper the Guardian, who chose to withdraw his privileges and prevent him from expressing pro Israel views on their ‘Comment is free’ platform.

Robin Shepherd has written about another speech, immensely supportive of Israel, made by the heroic Col Richard Kemp. He gets it. He refers to the knee-jerk almost Pavlovian response from many, many elements of the international media to anything done by Israel as “utter automatic condemnation.”
Robin Shepherd gives credit to the BBC just for publishing this article on its website. (Surely that should be a given, dark forces or no.)
There are a couple of the usual gratuitous inclusions in there, but on the whole, we should be grateful for small mercies.

*For “all” read “some.”

Anti-Zionists have persuaded the BBC to alter a report about a row at the meeting held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, (SOAS) in which the guest speaker was South African trade unionist Bongani Masuku.

Mr. Masuku has been condemned for hate speech by the South African Human Rights Commission. The SOAS audience consisted of pro Palestinian left wingers who wanted to confer chummily amongst themselves and share their outrage at the way Israel treats the Palestinians.

During the audience question time, up pops Jonathan Hoffman, vice chair of the Zionist federation, whose courageous personal appearances at hostile gatherings have earned him a reputation as a ‘hard-line Zionist’ and damned nuisance.

His question was simply “Why has this man, condemned for hate speech, been invited to speak at this place?” Admittedly, he read out the charges against Mr. Masuku first, which the audience found rather unpalatable, and this, combined with the fact that they disliked Mr. Hoffman and his well-known views, caused the whole audience to begin jeering and heckling. The chairman, Mr. Tom Hickey, then took over, warning them not to answer Mr. Hoffman’s question, or listen to anything he might say.

The BBC, uncharacteristically, reported this incident thus:

“Raheem Kassam, of student anti-racism campaigners Student Rights, said: “The overpowering racist jeering as displayed by some audience members at the event is a stark and chilling revelation of what can happen when extremism is allowed to take root in universities.

“This man was first shouted down, then ignored by the event chair and panellists.
“Why? From what we hear shouted when he is speaking, because he is, ‘Jewish’, and ‘not welcome here’.”

However, a few individuals didn’t think much of that, and emailed the BBC to complain, whereupon the BBC cut that out altogether and amended the article so it was more in line with the BBC worldview, along the lines that anti-Semitism is the sole prerogative of the SS., and it died out in 1948.

Funny how impossible it is for some people to get the BBC to alter things, while for others it’s as easy as writing a couple of emails.

If anybody who shares my interest in the BBC’s bias against Israel is reading this – as they say on Amazon – you might also like ……CifWatch.
CifWatch’s raison d’être is to draw attention to the anti Israel and anti-Semitic flavour of the online Guardian’s, ‘Comment is Free’. (Cif)
CifWatch commenters and posters document, then knowledgably and authoritatively rebut, anti-Semitic slurs that abound on Cif.
Recent CiFWatch posts by commenter AKUS give an outsider’s view of the British media and the ‘Brainwashing of Britain’
CiFWatchers must be aware, and indeed some of them have pointed out, that the BBC has a far broader reach, and necessarily influences a wider spectrum of the public, but the Guardian’s malevolence grates on this pro Israel and mainly Jewish online community more than the BBC’s seems to. If only it weren’t so virulently anti Jew and anti Israel, the Guardian might be their newspaper of choice. They remember with sadness the days when it was known as the Manchester Guardian and was highly respected. Perhaps they see the BBC as a lost cause, with a passive, easily brainwashed audience.
The Guardian isn’t hampered by a charter or any other inconvenient obligation, so it can more or less let rip and pander to an Israel hating audience if it so wishes, whereas the BBC has to restrain itself. The BBC is at least obliged to appear even-handed, but its underlying agenda often seeps through.

This morning for example there was an item on the Sunday Programme R4(0.19.50 in) about the multi faith celebrations in Haifa. A feel-good item one would think. Then just as you begin to feel good, Hugh Sykes chips in at the end with a reminder about the settlers who vandalised a mosque. Report it, okay, but put it in context, and don’t bring it gratuitously into an unrelated report lest the listeners might stop hating the Jews.

I don’t think the BBC’s bias is always deliberate. Ignorance has permitted myth to replace fact. Shoddy research, laziness and incompetence have worn away at the truth over many years, and these imperfections compound themselves as they bed in.
Now – we have what we have. One undoubted result is appalling ignorance from many who should know better; it produces characters like the gentleman outside the Baptist Central Church in the video that I linked to recently. Not the runny nosed John Sullivan, but the other one, the well-spoken John Benyon, who seemed blissfully ignorant about the organisation his church was hosting.
The virulence with which people express their indignation is matched by the ignorance in the endless strings of comments highlighted by CifWatch. What could be a clearer demonstration of the extent of the damage done by the brainwashing of Britain?

I am well aware that Peter Oborne’s C4 anti-Jew documentary was not a BBC programme. However, years of biased reporting on the Israeli/Palesinian situation well and truly prepared the ground for Peter Oborne to score his illegitimate goal.
Meanwhile, if anyone was acting as referee, they must have steadfastly withstood the pressure from the mighty Jewish lobby and looked the other way.

The inferior quality of the programme was no secret, and many of the supportive comments that popped up in response seem to be of a similar standard. But the obvious flaws in both provide little reassurance that the groundswell of anti Israel feeling can be disregarded as an aberration of the ignorant; like tattoos.

The insinuations littering the programme were designed to implant the idea that everything ever said in support of Israel was sponsored by wealthy Jews with an ulterior motive, while if any denunciation of Israel remained unsaid, that was only because wealthy Jews with an ulterior motive have suppressed it.

Peter Oborne says anti-Semitism is no longer a racist abomination against Jews, but a weapon used by them to quash protests from victims of the sinister Jewish lobby. The suggestion that Jews cynically use accusations of anti-Semitism as a silencing tool is itself a silencing tool of the first order.

What really is sinister is the media’s suspicion and dislike of Jews and the BBC’s affection for Muslims. Is nobody aware of the gathering storms of 30s Germany? How long before they drop their guard and blurt out that Hitler was right.

See Robin Shepherd’s article in the Wall Street Journal, read his blog. Check out CiFWatch.