…but only succeeded in further diminishing itself.
I am pleased to report to esteemed colleagues on this fine site that I finally downloaded British government documents on the Entebbe rescue opened to the public in May 2007 and pounced on by alleged journalist Dan Parkinson who was named and shamed by the indefatigable BBC Watch for triumphantly plucking part of a conspiracy theory from the documents in order to demean and discredit the Israelis and diminish one of the most brilliant and daring rescue operations of modern times.
Here’s the conspiracy theory, in full, sent to the FOC from the British Embassy in Paris:
June 30 1976
A contact in the Euro-Arab Parliamentary Association rang me on 29 June to say that according to his information, the hijack was the work of the PFLF, with help from the Israeli Secret Service, the Shin Beit. The operation was designed to torpedo the PLO’s standing in France and to prevent what they see as a growing rapprochement between the PLO and the Americans. Their nightmare is that after the November elections, one will witness the imposition in the Middle East of a Pax Americana, which will be to the advantage of the PLO (will gain international respectability and perhaps the right to establish a state on evacuated territories) and to the disadvantage of the Refusal Front (who will be squeezed right out in any overall peace settlement ….) and Israel (who will be forced to evacuate occupied territory). Hence the unholy alliance of the hijacking. My contact says that the PFLP had attracted all sorts of wild elements, some of whom had been planted by the Israelis.
Amazing how the Israeli Secret Service would conspire to commit an atrocity on fellow Israelis at the hands of German and Arab terrorists. Only an anti-Semite (or a BBC journalist) could believe such trash.
Even worse, Parkinson had this to say about dual UK-Israeli citizen Dora Bloch:
Two Israeli civilian hostages died in the shooting, and a third died later in a Nairobi hospital.
No, Dora Bloch was abducted from the hospital in Kampala (this ‘journalist’ can’t even get his cities/countries right) and murdered by Amin’s thugs. Her body was recovered later that year 32 km from Kampala and her callous murder caused Britain to break off relations with Uganda.
It defies belief that Parkinson did not know about this, since it caused outrage amongst the public at the time – and since the documents he sourced the story from have several letters and other references to the disappearance of Dora Bloch as the British government strove to find out what had happened to her.
It’s high time the BBC understood that it can no longer simply throw things it doesn’t like down the Memory Hole. We’ll just fish them out again and shove them in the BBC’s smug face.