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Mark Mardell reports that Mitt Romney’s comments about the Palestinians and the peace process are gaffes of  a catastrophic scale.

‘A new secret video clip has emerged of remarks by Republican candidate Mitt Romney, saying the Palestinians are committed to Israel’s destruction.

Mr Romney is shown saying that Palestinians are “committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel”.

“The Palestinians have no interest whatsoever in establishing peace,” he says, adding that “the pathway to peace is almost unthinkable to accomplish”.’

Or is Romney actually more in touch with the reality of the situation than either Mardell, the BBC or Obama? 

Curious that Mardell, in the interests of  a fully rounded report and the context of Romney’s remarks, doesn’t refer to what I guess these must be Palestinian ‘gaffes’ otherwise: 

Hamas Charter
Israel will exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it…. Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement…. The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight [kill] the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslim, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.

Fatah Constitution

Goals: Complete liberation of Palestine, and eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence. Method: Armed struggle is a strategy and not a tactic… in uprooting the Zionist existence, and this struggle will not cease unless the Zionist state is demolished…. Opposing any political solution offered as an alternative to demolishing the Zionist occupation in Palestine.

And in April 2012: 

Palestinian Authority minister stated last month that the Palestinians should unite in order to focus on the destruction of Israel.

At an event with the participation of three PA ministers, Minister of Social Affairs Majida Al-Masri called for Palestinian unity and reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas in order “to turn to the struggle for the liberation of Palestine – all of Palestine.”

It is curious how the BBC are so ready to comment on free speech and the limits that they believe should be imposed upon it when a video about Muhammed is aired on Youtube, less so when State governments have charters that call for the destruction of a nation and its people.

And Muslims aren’t going to stop at just Israel’s reconquest….the Muslim Brotherhood have their own ideas….yes, the BBC’s favourite moderate Muslims:

Muslim Brotherhood goal: Islamic world domination

– “…the Islamic Ummah  [nation]… can regain its power, be liberated and

assume its rightful position which was intended by Allah, as the most exalted

 nation among men, as the teachers of humanity…”

 – “…know your status, so that you firmly believe that you are the masters of  

the world, even if your enemies desire your degradation…”

– “It should be known that Jihad and preparation for Jihad are not only for the  

purpose of fending-off assaults and attacks against Muslims by Allah’s  

enemies, but are also for the purpose of realizing the great task of  

establishing an Islamic state, strengthening the religion and spreading it  

around the world…”

– “…Jihad for Allah is not limited to the specific region of the Islamic countries.

 The Muslim homeland is one and is not divided. The banner of Jihad has  

already been raised in some of its parts, and it shall continue to be raised,  

with the help of Allah, until every i nch of the land of Islam will be liberated, the 

State of Islam will be established…”

Means: Jihad – a mandatory religious duty

– “This is followed by the power of arms and weapons… This is the role

of Jihad.”

“Jihad is a religious public duty… incumbent upon the Islamic nation. Jihad is

a personal duty to fend off the infidels’ attack on the nation…”

– “The youth should know that the problems of the Islamic world, such as

Palestine, Afghanistan, Syria, Eritrea, or the Philippines, are not issues of

territories and nations, but of faith and religion. They are problems of Islam

and the Muslims, and they can be resolved neither by negotiation nor by

recognizing the enemy’s right to the Islamic land he stole. Rather, the only

option is Jihad for Allah, and this is why Jihad is the way.”

– “The symbol of the [Muslim] Brotherhood is the book of Allah [the Quran]

between two swords. The swords symbolize Jihad and the force that protects

the truth represented in Allah’s book.”

– “You should be prepared to answer the call of Jihad whenever you are

called, in any region of the Islamic world. Our Islam is universal not regional,

and all Islamic countries are one homeland….go out to battle, oh believers,

young and old, by foot or on horseback, under all circumstances and

conditions”

George R in the comments has come up with another good link which raises probably one of the most important questions this country, and many others like it, must answer….first of all of course the media and the politicians have to find some courage and ask that question.

Here is the issue that begs the question as admitted by a Muslim, Alibhai Brown:

‘It’s more or less over for progressive, liberal Islam. Many of us who’ve tried to keep alive the thoughtful, humane, cultured beliefs and practices of our parents and enlightened scholars can barely breathe or speak after the last wretched week when benighted mobs raved and killed across Muslim countries – some of them newly free and supposedly democratic.

Once, we could say with some certainty that Islamicist fanatics, thugs, killers and mind-benders represented a minority and that most Muslims, quiet and sane were unseen and unheard. Today, I fear it is the opposite.’

You can dispute the proposition that there was ever a progressive, liberal Islam as that is certainly not the philosophy preached by the Koran itself.

What isn’t in dispute, and even now we have a ‘renowned’ liberal/progressive, Ali Yasmin Alibhai-Brown coming round to recognising the fact, is that at heart Islam is a violent, intolerant and oppressive ideology….it is not just a few criminals, madmen or ‘perverters of Islam’ who adopt such violence in the name of Islam.

Islam is an ideology that should not  be graced with the term ‘religion’ as it is far from spiritual in its raw, natural state. 

That aside when liberal progressives themselves start to believe what was denounced  previously as the stuff of ‘right wing extremists’, Nazis and Melanie Phillips you have to ask what is to be done with Islam in Western secular countires where it has been steadily growing and a huge influx of immigrants have been further expanding the ghettos of western cities.

If, as Alibhai Brown suggests, that it is in fact a majoriy of Muslims who are fundamentalist, extremist or fanatical when the occasion arises, there needs to be an honest and open debate about the effects of having a large community of people who follow such an ideology settling in ever larger groups, refusing to integrate and pushing for laws that outlaw common Western, secular or non-Muslim practises which are deemed offensive to Islam.

How do you deal with an ideology that is essentailly colonising your country and ‘conquering’ it by stealth?

The ‘moderate’ and highly respected Islamic scholar Yusuf al Qaradawi, has openly stated what must be the wishes of a majority of Muslims:

‘Must the conquest of Europe be necessarily through war? No….There is such a thing as a peaceful conquest. The peaceful conquest has foundations in this religion and I therefore expect that Islam will conquer Europe without resorting to the sword or fighting.

It will do so by means of Da’wa (preaching) and ideology.

Muslims must start acting in order to conquer this world.’

 The same al Qaradawi who is now demanding  “demonstrations of Islamic rage”  in response to the video.

The Arab Spring ‘protestors’ state that what allowed them to get the courage to stand up and be counted was that they were suddenly ‘no longer afraid’ of what the State would do to them.

I suggest the likes of the BBC and the craven politicians also cast aside their fear of Muslim violence and stand up for the rights and values that  took 2000 years to develop and which were often only won with the blood of men and women  who, had they been looking on at the appeasement of the last few years, would have wondered if their own sacrifices had all been worth it when they are so easily cast aside and the country cast back into the dark ages of religious intolerance and bigotry.

 The BBC will of course choke on that as it references two of its unbreachable shibboleths…that of immigration and ‘respect’ for Islam.

Go get ’em!

BBC still in denial about Muslim Brotherhood?

Here is their take on the MB’s double dealing……

‘The protests began in Egypt, before spreading to many Muslim countries. But despite the views of many commentators, they were not provoked by Egypt’s new Muslim Brotherhood government.

er…but……

President Mohammed Mursi’s critics in the West say he also urged protests, which is true. American commentators point out that he has been saying one thing to Washington, and quite another to his own domestic audience.

But the truth is he was caught in the middle, between the need to respond to the popular mood in his own country, and the need to maintain good relations with the United States and the West.’

 Something he has learnt from BBC world ‘native’ correspondents?  One thing in English, another in Arabic.

Also interested to hear the BBC view of Syrian jets over Aleppo….apparently they are ‘a nerve shredding experience that has been going on for weeks.’

I expect that’s a similar experience to that of Israelis who suffered, and continue to suffer, a bombardment of thousands of rockets over, not weeks, but decades.

And just as an aside the Syrians are getting pretty hacked off that ‘Muslims’ seem to care more about a film than about Syrians being slaughtered:

Syrians wonder why Muslims aren’t rioting over them

Bashar Al-Assad @AssadPresident

A new survey of social attitudes  towards government spending has shown that in 1991 58% of people believed we should spend more on benefits, whilst by 2011 it had fallen to 28%.

Since 1998 support for more spending on benefits has consistently fallen.

Conclusion….in the greedy, selfish Thatcher years people were more caring and thoughtful about their fellow citizens.

It was only in the Blair years when Labour didn’t mind if people were ‘filthy rich’ that people stopped caring so much.

Mark Easton on ‘Today’ believes otherwise of course….his take is that it is government, that is the Coalition government’s, propaganda and right wing newspapers who are turning the Public against welfare recipients by labelling them scroungers, cheats and frauds….apparently we all think anyone who receives unemployment benefit if fiddling the dole…..because that’s what government policies tell us.

Never mind that our every day experience readily shows many people do ‘fiddle’ the dole or benefits system….or that the system is vastly more generous than Easton cares to admit….heard about the unemployed family which keeps 5 horses?

Easton of course takes up the ‘disabled’ lobby’s mantra that they are all looked upon as faking their disability and suffer a rising tide of hate crimes as a result…and it’s all the government’s fault….regardless of the fact that there very definitely are a number of fakers out there who need to be removed from the system is it really the government’s fault that people take the views that they do?

A close look at the survey reveals that in 1999 74% of people wanted more spending on disabled benefits. In 2006 that figure had fallen to 64%.

Now I know the BBC have forgotten we had a Labour government in charge for 13 years but wouldn’t those figures suggest that a little bit of management of people’s perceptions is going on in Easton’s report….as he forgets to mention them?

It isn’t only Easton who takes up the cudgel on behalf of the disabled lobby…it has been a regular refrain on the BBC that government has labelled all disabled people ‘scroungers’ and the BBC reports all seem slanted towards sympathy for the disabled lobby’s viewpoint.

Stories like this which are packed full of emotive phrasing and ideas but lack any real analysis only serve to further a certain view of this government as ‘nasty’ or ‘uncaring’, something the BBC seems keen to foster.

Today ‘Iran resurrects Salman Rushdie threat’.

‘Iran has seized on widespread Muslim outrage over a film insulting the Prophet Mohammad to revive the death threat against Salman Rushdie, raising the reward for killing him by US$500,000 (£320,000).’

Ironically yesterday the BBC finally found its backbone and spoke up in favour of defending civilised values of free speech and free thought….having Salman Rushdie on to speak along with others:

We were told that ‘respect’ for Islam was a codeword for fear….something we need to overcome….what we need is open discourse as part of the culture of this country..

We must defend the right of people to say things we don’t like, it’s not freedom of speech otherwise, we need to stand up for that freedom of speech more clearly.

Freedom of speech underpins the whole of society…democracy means nothing without freedom of speech, everybody otherwise lives in fear….all it requires is for good men to remain silent.

There is a lot of fear, especially around Islam, there is a phoney culture where no one admits the truth…that they are afraid of Islam….which results in a silencing of the necessary critical voices and debate and the continuation of identity politics.

How long this bravery lasts at the BBC remains to be seen….will they act on these words or are they merely mouthing platitudes, grandstanding whilst there are outrages across the Muslim world in protest against a film that is no more than a complete piece of rubbish…'”an idiotic video… A piece of garbage”‘, only to slip back into the old formula of quietly silencing all criticism of Islam and going along with anything any Muslim says about ‘respecting’ the religion, i.e. not allowing anyone to say anything Muslims disagree with.

Perhaps the BBC socialists will have a hard time coming to terms with allowing freedom of speech, at least for things they disagree about for as Hayek tells us Socialists and Islamists have a lot in common:

‘The French writers who laid the foundations of modern socialism had no doubt that their ideas could be put into practise only by a strong dictatorial government.  To them socialism meant an attempt to “terminate the revolution” by a deliberate reorganisation of society on hierarchical lines, and the imposition of a coercive “spiritual power”.  Where freedom was concerned, the founders of socialism made no bones about their intentions.  Freedom of thought they regarded as the root-evil of nineteenth-century society, and the first of modern planners, Saint-Simon, even predicted that those who did not obey his proposed planning boards would be “treated as cattle”.

Cattle eh?  Reminds one of Mehdi Hasan telling us we non-Muslims were all cattle. 

Socialists and Muslims…..wonder how that turned out in Iran?

An American takes a close look at the World  as Justin Webb would like it:

‘In yet another From Our Own Correspondent entry, Justin Webb reveals just how deep is his obsession with religion and religious Americans. How deep? Well, it seems that being a Bush supporter and – even worse, one imagines – a sunday school teacher is enough to set Webb to secretly questioning one’s children to make sure one is mentally suitable to qualify for Webb’s friendship.

I’m not making this up. As a lead in to his tediously typical portrayal of the American right as religiously ensconced ignoramuses, Webb relates a personal anecdote about going to dinner at the house of the parents of one of his own child’s classmates. He felt compelled to test the classmate, Meade, on the origins of the dinosaurs in order to satsify himself that the parents are not religious loons. As Webb himself tells us, the answer to his question will tell him “something about Meade’s parents which will affect our relationship.” Happily, after a pause which Webb finds to be “agonising”, Meade manages to provide a satisfactory answer, much to Webb’s immense relief….

“I could have hugged him and his parents; we are, after all, inhabiting the same mental planet.”

Sharing Webb’s “mental planet”? Poor Meade.

Webb continues:

“But many modern members of the Republican party, including some in positions of great power, do not seem to be living on that planet.

As the nation recovers this weekend from the worldly pleasures of the wonderfully inclusive festival of Thanksgiving, a festival which can appeal equally to atheist and Bible-basher, it seems to me that the central political question facing everyone here, far more important than any to do with Iraq or the deficit or Guantanamo Bay, is whether or not the Republican party, after decades of flirting, has finally got into bed with an irrational sect.”  ‘

ATTICUS in the Sunday Times (no link £) reveals the mindset of the BBC staff:

‘Which moment of the Olympics do you think was greeted with the biggest cheer by BBC staff?  Was it Mo Farrah’s win?  Or the gold for Jessica Ennis?

  Neither, according to the veteran sports reporter Harry Gration:  it was the moment when Team GB’s male footballers were knocked out of the tournament on penalties.

  He told  a literary lunch in Harrogate, North Yorkshire:  “There was just this feeling that the football wasn’t in the spirit of the Olympics.” ‘

Funnily enough Justin Webb confirms that attitude in another Sunday Times  piece (no link £) when he reveals in ‘MY HAVEN’ that: ‘To me rugby is the finest game ever invented.  I hope it supplants football as the national sport one day, because not only is it more complex and interesting, it involves a great degree of bravery too.  There’s a feel of good honest endeavour about rugby – players aren’t going to fake injuries, as they so often are in modern football.’

Good to hear that a presenter from a major news programme hasn’t heard of ‘Blood Gate’ or stories like this ‘Rugby World Cup: Ireland faked injuries to beat us, says ex-Australia star.’

Must assume he also thinks football fans are too thick to watch a ‘complex game’, the players being too cowardly, unskilled and somehow dishonest in football.

Martin Bright tells us  what we know to be true already….‘Supporters of Israel are losing the battle of ideas in the UK. This has probably been true for some time, if only they would admit it.’

A major part of this failure to get across the truth  can be laid at the BBC’s door who continually concentrate on the negative about Israel.  Israeli military  operations are always violent, aggressive, out of proportion whilst palestinian attacks are ‘in response’ to Israeli aggression.

Once the BBC ventures into Israel itself and casts its eye over Israeli society again all they look to highlight are the negatives….we have had a programme on the Orthodox Jews who are pretty fundamentalist…and now we have Panorama looking at Israeli ‘Price Taggers’ (Monday night..tomorrow) settlers who refuse to give up settlement land…..

‘Their weapons are firebombs and spray cans, and they have been branded Jewish terrorists; Panorama has exclusive access to the so-called Price Taggers, the Israeli teenagers who have sworn never to give up the land God gave them. They believe every Palestinian attack and every attempt by the Israeli government to hand back land should be met with an act of revenge – a Price Tag. Israel says it is determined to tackle what has been described as this enemy within, but do the authorities have the ability or the will to stop them?’

No problem mentioning the ‘terrorist’ word here…nor ‘Jewish’ in conjunction with that.

Who needs the Elders Of Zion when you have the good folk at the BBC damning Israel’s every move?  What next?  Israeli dog bites Arab…was it trained  to do this as part of an ethnic cleansing operation to force Palestinians out of israel?

The BBC have produced a nice piece of propaganda  for the government putting the case for High Speed Trains….attempting to both use the romance of rail travel and some ‘hard facts’ that suggest large government HST can save us from disaster.

It is in fact a rather curious piece for the BBC in that it not only enthuses about private investment in the railways, it has a wonderfully ‘Monty Python’ moment with a union man berating British Rail boss Peter Parker, and it also gives an almost glowing testimony to Mrs Thatcher…saying she improved the rail service more than it had been in the previous 20 years (and states Privatisation came after her term in office).

Or rather talking heads were allowed to say such things….such as Prue Leith (once on the Board of BR) saying she was always annoyed by people always clamouring about the Japanese Bullet Train without saying how much it cost and how long it took to develop and how much further improvement it has had since….how unsocialist actually looking at the cost of some great project!

Still you can’t help thinking this was a programme with a message at a time when the government are nearing making a final decision on giving the latest High Speed train development the go ahead.  Note the weighted references to lack of government investment and industrial, economic and political troubles…..is that meant to resonate now? 

Are they suggesting a massive investment in a single rail line will ‘save’ the country?

You make your own mind up, here are some quotes from various interested parties on the programme:

‘This is the story of how we rediscovered our love affair with high speed rail travel.

During a period of industrial gloom and political upheaval how did the unexpected triumph of the Intercity 125 help save British Rail and give us the Age of the Train?

With inadequate government investment, criticised as overstaffed, out of date and a waste of public money, Parker didn’t have much to smile about as he attempted to modernise the railway at a time of cutbacks.

Their was too much short termism…when you build something like the High speed Train you’ve got something with a life of maybe 30 years.

Parker knew he had to change the way we thought about the railways and he had to take on the doubters.

His legacy lives on. This is still the age of the High speed Train…we owe it to the 125 for rescuing British Rail from destruction, from near collapse in the 70’s. If it hadn’t been for the 125 we’d have been in real trouble.

I think the HST is a train whose time is still coming.’