Here are some guidelines from Ofcom with regard to what we should expect from the BBC in the way of programme standards:
The BBC is required to observe certain of the programme standards objectives (“the relevant programme standards”) set by Ofcom under section 319 of the Act, namely:
Refraining from the use of techniques which exploit the possibility of conveying a message to viewers or listeners, or of otherwise influencing their minds, without their being aware, or fully aware, of what has occurred.
In other words the BBC should not be slipping political, social or cultural messages into its programming in order to influence our thoughts and behaviour.
Such a refrain has obviously had little effect as the BBC deliberately set out to manufacture our opinions on climate change and hence the government’s response should it recognise that ‘public concern’ generated by the BBC’s messaging….all organised by the BBC’s Roger Harrabin and implemented in his infamous seminars in which BBC staff were persuaded to accept the premise that climate change is happening and is man made, and that messages about the dangers of that climate change and the actions necessary to prevent it should be slipped into BBC programming be it comedy, drama, soaps, news or indeed science programmes….not forgetting children’s programmes.
The BBC does not limit such Soviet style practises to climate though, apart from immigration, Islam, Europe and welfare there is the Middle East, Israel/Palestine in particular.
As you read this the BBC is probably reporting that Hamas doesn’t really exist…the Israeli army is remorselessly and savagely bombarding Gaza, taking out hospitals, schools and innocent civilians without cause or reason, reducing Gaza to rubble just because it can, and wants to….but curiously there is nobody shooting at them. How many times have we heard from the BBC that the Israelis have bombed or shelled something or someone in Gaza killing ‘x’ number of Palestinians, according to Palestinian health officials ( who are completely neutral and honest) and only then is it mentioned that the Israelis might have been firing at someone who had fired at them first…allegedly? It is rare that the BBC mentions Hamas as the instigator of a firefight or that Hamas rockets falling short maybe the cause of death and destruction in Gaza….the default culprit is always Israel.
BBC News is nowadays more a work of dramatic fiction and emotive angst than straight reporting making dramatic programmes like ‘The Honourable Woman’ almost redundant.
The Honourable Woman though has its place in the BBC battle order…..it is a ‘weapon’ of war as much as any gun or bomb…it is a ‘smart bomb’ delivered into thousands, if not millions, of homes around the world bearing not high explosives but a poisonous message….a message delivered by the BBC on behalf of Hamas, Fatah and all those who wish to ‘wipe Israel off the map’.
That explosive message is that Israel, the ‘Jewish state’, should be dismantled and the Palestinians allowed to take the land of Israel….needless to say the BBC glosses over what would happen to the Jews, merely implying that all would be peace and harmony as the love and understanding flowed between the two peoples.
The Honourable Woman of the title is Nessa Stein, the daughter of a ‘Zionist arms dealer’ who has provided the ‘walls’ for Israel’s successful defence….but he was killed by a Palestinian and Nessa and her brother Ephra took over the reins of his company turning it away from the nasty business of arms dealing towards education and infrastructure development for Palestinians…hoping to bring the two sides together eventually.
That is one message…..the father was ‘old Israel’, the well armed defender of the Jewish State’s right to exist…Nessa is the new Israel taking down those ‘walls’ that separate the Jews from the Palestinians…..‘walls’ being the mental attitudes but also an allusion to the physical security barrier the Israelis had to build to keep suicide bombers and various Palestinian murderers out of Israel….the writer, Hugo Blick, obviously feels he knows better than the Israelis here about the need for security.
In later episodes this theme is expanded on and the BBC can be seen to relish the potential destruction and defeat of Israel and the triumph of the Palestinians as the ‘purity’ of the Jewish state is corrupted and undermined by the influx of Palestinians into the land.
Nessa’s father was killed on the orders of a Fatah commander, the father of the man who raped Nessa when she was kidnapped in Gaza, Nessa giving birth to a son as a result of that rape.
The Fatah commander, naturally representing the various Palestinian ‘resistance’ movements in this allegory, gloried in the ‘poisoning’ of the Stein bloodline with Palestinian blood….
‘The grandson of Eli Stein with my blood in its veins…first I ordered his death and now I take his heritage….how great is his defeat!’
A clear message…the Palestinian militants have fought the Israelis and killed many but the real battle will only be won by destroying the ‘heritage’, the bloodline, of the Jews by flooding Israel with Palestinian people…the ‘right of return‘…in other words destroying the Jewish nature of the Israeli state…the whole reason for its existence….that second phase can only begin when Israel drops its guard, its military defence (represented by the death of the arms dealing father) and more importantly the will to defend itself….this loss of will is represented by Nessa taking over the company with a completely different mindset and attitude and who believes that if only the Jews and the Palestinians could work and live together all would be well…there would be no ‘Israel’ but a one state solution…..a Palestine from the river to the sea…in other words Israel is wiped out.
A nice bit of pro-Palestinian propaganda from the BBC.
Hugo Blick slips in many more little kickers to push the message that Israel is an evil state that needs to be dealt with…….
The Palestinian nanny, Atika, tells us that she is ‘A stranger in her own land….but we learn how to wait’….clearly the thought is that the tyrannical Israel cannot last forever.
Nessa proclaims Atika is ‘The Wandering Arab’…not once but twice to reinforce the message…this is an allusion to the ’Wandering Jew’, Blick trying desperately to turn the Palestinians into victims of Israeli oppression and tyranny….The Wandering Jew was forced to roam the world homeless and scavenging for a living…..Atika dramatically states ‘It is what the world has made me.’ Not really though…it is what the Palestinian leaders have made her.
When Nessa first meets Atika in the West Bank Blick has them mouth a rather forced exchange, the only reason for it to once again paint Israel as an oppressor when Nessa asks Atika how often she visits her home in Gaza….Atika replies she doesn’t, the borders are closed…Nessa replies… ‘Of course…how stupid of me!’
But….The borders aren’t closed, just restricted…no surprise as the Palestinians are conducting a war against Israel….having said that Atika and Nessa somehow manage to get themselves into Gaza…so clearly ‘closed borders’ are no obstacle.
When Nessa and her brother Ephra, are at a family party the camera lingers on a group of Jewish men who cheer the news on the TV that ‘Israel will not negotiate with terrorists’…..Nessa says to Ephra, who initiated the change from arms dealing to ‘promoting peace and reconciliation’ for his father’s company, that ‘Pappa would be proud of you.’….Ephra looks disdainfully at the cheering Jews and says ‘Yes I think he would have been.’ Clearly a tough stance on defence is not welcome by Ephra/Blick.
Ephra describes the educational faculties provided by his company as being in Israel, East Jerusalem and the West Bank…..Israel considers all of Jerusalem to be its capital…so a sly dig there by Blick.
The Israeli Ambassador is played as if he were a Gestapo officer from the war….very reminiscent of so many WWII films….Just a coincidence I’m sure.
Blick also introduces a device into the programme seemingly just so that he can accuse Israel of being a racist state running an apartheid system. He creates an unnecessary storyline where Israeli ex-military are given preferential treatment when applying for university courses…to the detriment of Israeli Arabs.
This was, as said, just an excuse to malign Israel by proclaiming it an apartheid state (repeated for reinforcement of effect as with the ‘Wandering Arab’ line) despite being in reality one of the most democratic and open states in the Middle East…and one where Christians can consider themselves safe…not something they could do anywhere else in the Middle East.
The real, central, storyline was that the Israelis had tapped into the Palestinian’s communications by using the cables laid by Nessa’s company….all leading to an Israeli listening post seemingly in a broom cupboard, an unlocked broom cupboard, in the university itself…the entry to which was controlled by an Arab Israeli….top security there then! Great writing!
The character played by Igal Naor, Shlomo Zahary, was a pantomime Jew, a stereotype set up to be portrayed as shifty, money grabbing and untrustworthy….Blick summarises him as someone ‘who could always smell a deal.’…what does he mean about our stereotypical Jewish pantomime villain?
Blick has a clear message to impart…Israel is a racist, apartheid state that oppresses the Palestinians but will eventually be overwhelmed by a flood of returning Palestinians to ‘their own land’ when Israel’s will to defend itself militarily is broken and the ‘purity’ of the Jewish state is leavened by the demographic reality of that mass of Palestinians making a Jewish state meaningless and impossible.
‘How great would be their defeat?’
It would seem the BBC is wishing such defeat upon Israel….and it has no shame in broadcasting such a programme as Israel battles the very forces of terrorism, ethnic cleansing and murder that the BBC supports and broadcasts on behalf of in both its news bulletins and drama….still three more episodes to go but somehow doubt Israel will turn out to be the ‘good guy’ in all this.
‘Homeland’ was far, far superior.
