H/T to Teddy Bear for the title…it sums up this post in one line…how the BBC can misrepresent the facts by spinning and contorting cause and effect so that the guilty are innocent and the innocent are guilty.

A point in case, which came first, the Islamic desire for a Caliphate or Muslim anger at Western ‘interference’?  Upon that question lies the West’s response to the likes of Al Qaeda and ISIS.

Get the analysis wrong and you are fighting the wrong battle.

The BBC tries to influence that response by changing the Public’s perceptions of Islam and the reasons for Muslim ‘anger’, thereby attempting to put pressure on politicians using Public opinion.  The BBC of course blames Western interference, that is, foreign policy.

So far that pressure has worked and the politicians refused to tackle Syria and are still trying to wriggle out of any direct military action against ISIS due to the ‘hangover’ from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The correct answer is naturally that the desire for a Caliphate came before all else…after all there was no British foreign policy in the 7th century when the first Caliphate was created in a remarkably similar way to the ISIS one, a small band of fanatical warriors taking advantage of a power vacuum and the lack of will of the great powers to stop them.

There are three major questions that need to be answered….

• Why are Muslims being radicalised?  (and does it matter if they are?)

• Are Muslims obliged to go on Jihad in order to defend other Muslims and Muslim lands?

• If Muslims are so obliged are they justified in their belief that Muslims and Muslim lands are under attack and need defending?

The narrative used by the BBC is the same one used by the terrorists, that foreign policy has forced them to fight against the West which has launched a war against Islam and Muslims who now need defending.

If you don’t change that narrative it is hard to see how you can defeat this enemy and prevent radicalisation due to that narrative….the BBC’s assertion is that if you fight against ISIS then you just add to the Muslim perception that you are anti-Muslim…thereby creating more Jihadis…though it is a curious thing that the BBC highlights Muslim disapproval of ISIS and yet tells us that the same Muslims will be angry if we set the troops onto them….the BBC having its cake and eating it….telling us how moderate and integrated the UK Muslims are….and yet still managing to try and block military action in the Middle East.

Shiraz Maher in the New Statesman has a different view and gives a far better and indepth explanation of the causes of events in the Middle East than the BBC cares to do:

From Bin Laden to Isis: Why the roots of jihadi ideology run deep in Britain

Had Osama Bin Laden lived to see the present state of the Middle East he would have been rather pleased. The realisation of his ultimate ambition is gripping the Levant with the announcement of a caliphate straddling parts of Syria and Iraq.

This is precisely what Bin Laden always envisioned. His main thesis on the failure of the Islamist project was that western interference in the Middle East prevented the rise of Islamic governments. Weaken the west’s sphere of influence, he argued, and a caliphate would emerge.

The BBC puts ‘western interference’ as the cause for the conflicts….the reality is that the ‘Islamist project’ to create a Caliphate came first….’western interference’ was not the cause, it was merely an obstruction on the road to a Caliphate.

That is a crucial point……if people fail to grasp that they cannot counter the Jihadis narrative or at least the rationale for it, something we are constantly told is essential to prevent radicalisation.

Nick Cohen isn’t impressed with the likes of the BBC’s narrative, though he claims it is cowardice rather than betrayal…..

Since 9/11, western intellectuals have had a choice. They could have taken on militant religion, exposed its texts, decried its doctrines and found arguments to persuade young British men not to go to Syria and slaughter “heretics”. But religious fanatics might have retaliated. Instead, they chose the safe option of attacking the phantom menace of militant atheists, who would never harm them. Leaving all philosophical and moral objections aside, they have been the most awful cowards.

ISIS is scaring the hell out of everyone.

Famously there’s no strategy to deal with it…apart from this exercise in futility….

The US government has slipped out a sly little video that tries to undermine ISIS by highlighting its tendency to kill what the US government says are Muslims…as well as blowing up their mosques.

The video, graphic in nature, is available to view on the Huffington Post site,  or you can see it on YouTube…where ironically you cannot see it unless you sign in to ‘prove’ your age….so kind of limited as propaganda…and the fact it is obviously from the US government must somewhat undermine its credibility with anti-The Great Satan recruits.

The problem with the video’s thesis that ISIS claims it is defending Muslims but is in fact killing Muslims is that the ‘Muslims’ being killed are Shia, so not Muslim in the Sunni’s eyes, and the mosques are also Shia mosques…so no problem there….and the people being crucified are criminals….probably not a problem there either for many who like to see the smack of firm justice.  So IS is killing apostates, heretics and criminals.  All good so far for the fundamentalist Sunni Muslim.

The release of this video at least gives the lie to the claim that religion has no part in this.

Personally I prefer the sentiments expressed in this video (graphic)

A second part to the propaganda war is the wooing of discontented Jhadists who want to come home to mom and apple pie…..the BBC’s preferred course of action….treating terrorists as victims.

The BBC has leapt upon the ex-MI6 bod, Richard Barrett, who wants us to allow these Jihad dropouts to come home where they will be recruited to serve in the government’s war of ideas:

Good idea, as all the talking heads and politicians who rushed onto the BBC professed….and using an ‘ex’ MI6 person gives a degree of separation from the government…so this isn’t a government initiative…yeah right.

Only…..not so much of a good idea.

Imagine a Jihadi who jumps ship, not only does he flee the battlefield leaving his comrades to fight on but he begs the hated British government to let him back home and not to sling him in jail….and then he goes on the telly or gets a write up in the Guardian and the Times where he tells potential Jihadis they’re makimg a mistake, stay home, get an education, get a job, stay under the thumb of the Kufar.

What do you reckon any potential Jihadi would make of him, or even any ‘moderate’ Muslim?

Consider what they think of Quilliam.

They would have nothing but disdain and contempt for such people.

Consider the appeal of the Caliphate…..

You have to admit there would be a romantic appeal to this for many.  ISIS is working hard at the hearts and minds as well as slaughtering people.

So that is one aspect any government should be trying to disprove and undermine…the belief that there is an obligation upon all Muslims to defend Muslims and Muslim lands from attack and that there is any justification for acting on any such obligation….problem with that is…there is such an obligation.  Islam, that religion of peace, demands it.

If there is such an obligation that leaves only one other way out…to persuade Muslims that Islam and Muslims are not under attack….and therefore they have no need to conduct Jihad.

Trouble is….the BBC et al have spent years telling Muslims they are under attack.  Kinda hard to reel back on that one.

Another aspect to this is the frequent assertion is that, you know what, these Jihadis aren’t really Jihadis…they went to help charities, feed the poor, build schools for the children, they were just caught up in the fighting, in the worng place at the wrong time,  only radicalised once they get out there…but not true……

Islamism with a Human Face

The British media is continuing to publish puff pieces about Islamist extremists working for British charities in Syria.

“Aid workers”  use philanthropic endeavour to put a human face on extreme Islamism. These various puff pieces paint violent Islamism as nothing more than welfare provision. Although the misuse of charitable aspirations is by no means a new phenomenon, the media is, at present, particularly guilty of affording legitimacy to such barefaced exploitation.

And of course we all remember ‘charity worker’ Moazzem Begg, the BBC’s favourite goto boy for a comment…the BBC that campaigned to get him released from Guantanamo….the same Begg who is now proselytising on behalf of the Islamist cause as part of the Islamist campaign group Cage’s operation.

Why is it the BBC sees no problem with the statements made by Cage?  Islam offering a genuine alternative to neo-Liberalism?  What could that mean?

“We’ve been a bit politically naive,” he said. “We haven’t questioned some of the underlying assumptions about who Muslims are and what they believe in.”
PREVENT strikes at the heart of the transnational identity that Muslims have, and confuses or shrouds the core principles of Islam which offer genuine alternatives to an aggressive global neo-liberal system.
Asim Qureshi, Research Director at CAGE

Is it a crime to care?

The concepts of jihad, shariah and khilafah are not the exclusive possession of ISIS but core Islamic doctrines subscribed to by almost one third’s of the world’s population. It is telling that the government’s treatment of ISIS is similar to its treatment of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizb-ut Tahrir, and the Taliban, despite the enormous differences of belief and methodology between the groups.
Witch-hunts such as the Trojan Horse hoax and the mass hysteria over issues of the niqab, halal food and conservative Muslim values demonstrate that the criminalisation is spreading beyond Middle Eastern politics.
Join CAGE at this series of events around the country to unite the Muslim communities against this criminalisation of our faith, our beliefs, our mosques and organisations, and our leaders.

It would be a mistake to kid yourself that what is being proposed is merely a campaign to ensure Muslims can practise their faith, within the confines of a secular, democratic society.

The BBC’s and the Establishment approach to defining the problem is the problem.

Finally it must have been very galling for the BBC to hear an Iraqi Sunni spokesman on the Today programme (08:00 ish) state that Sunnis were proud to be Iraqis an wanted to remain as part of an Iraqi nation….John Humphrys certainly sounded surprised.

That undermines the line the BBC has been spinning that the creation of such nation states is an anathema to Arabs who all want to live in a borderless caliphate…..and therefore Britain and France are to blame for all the ills in the Middle East due to the imposition of the ‘secret’ Sykes-Picot agreement.

Sykes-Picot was not secret, the Arab leaders negotiated the agreement before the Bolsheviks revealed the agreement to the world….and of course it was the League of Nations who finally settled the borders and status of the different regions.  The Arabs agreed the borders and fought with the British in order to end the Ottoman Empire, or Caliphate, and not to save it…they wanted their own nation.  Sykes-Picot gave them an Arab state, Saudi Arabia, and eventually, as agreed, much more, such as an independent Iraq and Trans-Jordan..or Palestine as it should be called.

The BBC has long supported the terrorist’s own narrative, the one that also recruits fresh blood to the cause…the idea that Western foreign policy is to blame for all ills in the Middle East and for the radicalisation of Muslims.

However that line is designed by the BBC to avoid one inconvenient factor, the responsibility of Muslims themselves for their own situation and for the urge to conduct a holy war against their chosen opponents.

Muslim supremacists want to impose Islam upon the Middle East.  That should be the starting point of any explanation for events.  This isn’t an attack on the West per se…that will come later.  The Holy war is to impose Islam…the West just happens to be in the way.

The BBC and others instead start from the point where the West is the target due to ‘blowback’ for its actions, if the West weren’t in the Middle East there would be peace, but they refuse to explain the real issues, the real cause of the wars…to do so would put the blame squarely onto the Islamists, the Muslims.  And the BBC is desperate to avoid doing that for many reasons.

Harry’s Place records that

Anti-semitic incidents reach record level in July 2014

One anti-Semitic incident was missing from those statistics.

At a time in history when the Middle East is in flames and running with blood and the Israel/Palestine conflict is oft cited as the catalyst for all other conflicts you might think it was an incendiary move by the BBC when it decided this was the perfect time to add fuel to the flames by broadcasting a series that sides with Islamic terrorists and promotes the destruction of Israel.

The BBC thought otherwise.

‘You know what “clue” is in Ancient Greek? It’s “thread”.

One thread to pull it all together.

And all I have to do is find it.’

So said MI5’s Hugh Hayden-Hoyle in the BBC’s ‘The Honourable Woman’.

Many, if not all, reviews of the series have declared that it is an immensely complex and deeply plotted piece but in reality it is quite simple…once you find the thread, the message it wishes to impart.

That thread that pulls everything together for the BBC’s ‘The Honourable Woman’ is  the terrible things Palestinians are prepared to do, forced to do by Israeli tyranny and oppression in the writer’s eyes, in order to establish a Palestinian state….the thread throughout the series is that ‘price for a nation ‘.

The politics of the programme were pretty much ignored by the reviewers, not bothering to ask if there was a message in the tale, possibly as any genuine assessment would not paint the BBC in a good light,  though one reviewer declared that Palestinians would be upset as ‘once again they find themselves cast as the villains’.

The series did indeed revolve around a Palestinian group kidnapping and murdering its way to its intended goal, a Palestinian state, with the connivance of the USA and a rogue UK MI5 officer.

However….such unpleasant actions, we were repeatedly told, were the inescapable and tragic result of decades of Israeli terrorism, murder and lies against the defenceless Palestinians who had no other weapons but terrorism…a narrative echoed by sympathetic BBC reporters in the recent Gaza conflict…though that is somewhat turning the truth upon its head….the Israelis being the ones who have suffered 70 years of terrorism, attempted invasions and ethnic cleansing.

Here you can see that narrative in black and white as a Palestinian excuses her duplicity and the murder of the Jewish Stein family…..

Atika:

I lost all my family.
All my family.

Have you seen the hills? What they’re building? Every day and every day? What you try don’t change anything for my people.  We need so much more.

Nessa:

What else can I do? Do you need me to die? Me?

Atika:

Oh, no. No….But if it’s the price for a nation I’m sorry to tell you, yes.

Here is the BBC laying out the Palestinian’s case for mitigation and absolvement for their use of terrorism……an analogy where the writer uses the Palestinian’s murder and rape of Nessa Stein’s family as a metaphor for what the Jews have supposedly done to Palestine…and in turn turning the Palestinians into ‘animals’, uncultured and violent…just one more reason to hate the Jews…..and in the end Nessa, being told these ‘truths’, agrees and accepts ‘her’ guilt saying ‘I deserve it‘….Nessa is ‘Israel’ here….the writer making her the guilty symbol of the Israeli state, and making her agree that Israel is to blame…..

Zahid Al-Zahid (Fatah commander):

Do you know who I am? I am Kasim’s grandfather.
My son raped you.
On my orders.
Mine.
One of my soldiers, also, he killed your father.
On my orders.
What I have ordered goes beyond all imagining.
So I must ask you if there was a knife on the table between us here what would you do? Your brother is dead.
My orders.
The hatred you feel for me right now only matches what I have felt for your people all my life.

I know you won’t take it because you think you are better than me….More cultured, more sophisticated, more human.
And I hate you all the more because you have never stopped to think why that is.

 

Nessa Stein:

No, I have.
I have.
And I know the answer.
And I’ve known it since I first asked and after every dreadful thing that’s happened since and the answer’s always the same.
I deserve it.
All of it.

So that’s the message from the BBC…the Jews deserve everything they get from the Palestinians…all of it.

A message reinforced when Atika, as she lay dying, spat out the demand to ‘Get off my land!’

This long drawn out BBC series set in Israel/Palestine, ‘The Honourable Woman’, has been a blatantly pro-Palestinian State tract all along….with the message that Israel is an illegitimate state that should be erased from the map….a message silently bolstered by the camera lingering on a map in a Palestinian official’s office showing ‘Palestine’ as including the whole of Israel….

One of the few comments that touches slightly on the politics of the programme is this as the Guardian applauds Blick’s apparent  skill in negotiating the political minefield:

Does anyone perceive Blick taking sides? I thought he walked a difficult tightrope with real skill. Calling for equality of opportunity with the statement: “Terror thrives in poverty. It dies in wealth,” felt powerful without being contentious.

The Guardian tells us that the writer, Hugo Blick, also the producer and director,

Chose no sides and offered no political resolution.

That’s clearly not true…he sided with the Palestinians and his political resolution was a one state solution…in other words the end of Israel and the erasure of a Jewish homeland and safe haven.

As the conflict in Gaza commenced the BBC no doubt thought that The Honourable Woman could have its place in the BBC battle order as it agitated against the Israeli state…..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 smart bomb that is intended to target the secure walls of the Israeli ‘house’ whilst not killing the occupants, merely forcing them to flee into exile, once again.

Hugo Blick declares he has no axe to grind, the series is apolitical….

The Honourable Woman is a work of fiction and yes, it does look at real and current politics in the Middle East but, I am certainly not offering any actual, specific answers to such a complex and emotionally provocative issue except to explore what happens to fictional characters who do.

My political sympathies and/or ideologies are not relevant to the story which stands on its own particular platform.

However he admits that he has a strong interest in those politics…..

Here this fascination comes from a lifelong interest and careful consideration of the real world conflict that serves as a back drop to this story – but necessarily it only goes so far as to relate to the motivations of my fictional characters.

It is important that viewers and critics watch the entire series – as intended – before making judgements on the characters or story arc because great care has been taken to explore this complexity.

The series though had threaded through it continuous slurs against Israel and apologia for Palestinian atrocities.

As Nessa Stein was being raped by her Palestinian captor we saw that he needed to take drugs to enable him to carry out the crime.  Essentially we were being told he is a decent man driven by circumstances and unable to do it unless off his head on drugs.  As he went to rape Nessa he waved photographs of his wife and child, killed by the Israelis, in Nessa’s face as yet more proof that it is the anguish and mental pain caused by those evil Israelis that excuses his actions.

Blick’s tale is a shallow, naive allegory of the Middle East…Nessa Stein’s zionist, arms dealing father is the old Israel, or rather the Israel that it still is, ‘armed and dangerous’, whilst the daughter, Nessa Stein, that ‘Honourable Woman’, is the new Israel, or rather the ‘one state’ solution where the walls are taken down and there are no barriers any more between the Jews and the Palestinians and everyone lives happily everafter.

The father is killed off, Blick signalling his belief that Israel should be destroyed as a state….Blick admits that the conflict is embodied within the characters…what happens to the characters a metaphor for what happens in the conflict…. ‘In The Honourable Woman the conflict is used as a creative device – a reflection of the internal conflict of the central character.’

Nessa tells us that strong walls were needed for Israel to thrive at its birth, and that’s what her father offered, strong walls for a fledgling nation….but those walls aren’t needed now.
She goes on, telling us that Israel’s GDP in the previous year exceeded $220bn…a fledgling nation no more….the Palestinians on the other hand had a GDP of only $4bn.
She tells us ‘What a difference a wall makes.’

Which wall would that be Mr Blick?  Could he possibly be making a not so subtle allusion to the Israeli security barrier?  It must come down!

Nessa goes on to reveal that ‘I believe in Israel’  but there needs to be ‘fundamental change….the greatest threat to Israel is Palestinian poverty, terror thrives in poverty, it dies in wealth…..The strongest wall we can help Israel to maintain is one through which equality of opportunity can pass.’

Blick is saying that that wall must come down, it must be breached, he is saying Israel must be destroyed as a Jewish nation.

And Blick is not above using Jewish stereotypes…the moaning wife of Nessa’s brother being an archetypal ‘Jewess’ whilst the Jewish businessman, Shlomo, wanting the contract for laying communications cables, is the Pub ‘humorists’ idea of a Jewish businessman…brash, rude, loud and obnoxious….add onto that a racist talking of that ‘Palestinian bastard’ and subliminally suggesting that Arabs are ‘fucking camel jockeys’….oye vay!

It should also be noted that the BBC was happy to screen this programme despite it involving the kidnapping of a Palestinian child.  No cultural sensitivities, no postponing of the broadcast, at a time when a Palestinian teenager has indeed been kidnapped and killed.

The Guardian certainly liked what it saw and applauded its ‘relevance’…check the link they provide:
‘This new eight-parter is among the most exciting TV events of the year (pace the World Cup). The opener didn’t disappoint, weaving not one but two whodunnits – the suicide/murder of Samir Meshal and kidnap of Kasim – around the most intractable political issue of the day (it could hardly feel more timely) and the life of the woman in the middle.’

There were some nice anti-Semitic touches in this episodes that must have played well with some.

We had one character called ‘Yaniv Levi’ described as that ‘horrible, horrible Israeli terrorist’ (there are of course so many of those)….whilst the Palestinian ones were all conflicted and anguished, driven to do ‘horrible things’ by dire circumstances forced upon them by the cruel world.  The Israeli ‘terrorist’  seemed to be just a gratuitous creation designed purely to suggest it is not only Palestinians who are capable of such things.

Levi was made to look as unattractive as possible with copious amounts of body hair, slumping fatly in a track suit with a Star of David made up of rifles that the camera lingered over for some reason whenever he came into shot……some sort of message there?  He was later described as ‘an Israeli attack dog….he always has a price….what Jew doesn’t.’

Good old BBC, feeding the stereotype and making up a few new ones.

And what to make of the Stein group’s logo?  Looks remarkably like a rocket launch from Gaza with someone cheering it on.  Just a coincidence I’m sure…..it must mean something else entirely……

The Palestinian commander ordering the rape and killing is from Fatah not Hamas…why Fatah and not Hamas in Gaza?  Fatah being the BBC’s least favourite Palestinian terrorist group….the BBC once dismissing Hamas’s murderous rampage in 2006 when it threw Fatah members off roof tops and dragged them from hospital beds to shoot them in front of their families as merely ‘clearing out a corrupt and violent Fatah’.  That’s OK then.
The Fatah commander 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, the purity of the Jewish state 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.

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 that 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 make clever associations and 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 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.’   Quite clear what message the writer intended to impart to us.

The Israeli Ambassador is played as if he were a Gestapo officer from the war….very reminiscent of so many WWII films….Just another coincidence I’m sure….good to have a Jew acting like a Nazi!

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.

‘What I discovered, it seems that the, erKidma Academy, ‘funded by the Stein Foundation, ‘is running a discriminatory selection process ‘against Israeli Arabs and in favour of Israeli military veterans.   Education is a meritocracy by function.   As soon as you use it as a tool ‘for social engineering on race grounds you’re simply creating an apartheid system.’

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 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 who are forced to react in the only way possible for them with terrorism,  but Israel 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?’  

Some at the BBC are already planning the obituary.

Jon Donnison gets ever more bizarre:

Still relying on children to get people to look at his ‘journalism’ though….

He’s so popular that he has to limit those who want to read  and respond to his schtick:

Some unfortunately he can’t block…the truth is out there…just not on Donnison’s Twitter feed:

Always tickles me how numbnuts Israel hating Donnison doesn’t have a clue what is going on in Gaza and yet keeps bluffing it like he does……claiming Hamas didn’t kidnap the Israeli teens….

Who is the Plitnick Donnison links to?…..a lefty peacenik:

Mitchell Plitnick is the former Director of the US Office of B’Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories and was previously the Director of Education and Policy for Jewish Voice for Peace.

Why not listen to Hamas and the terrorists themselves?:

A longer video of Hamas commander al Arouri’s speech – as broadcast on Al Jazeera – can be seen here courtesy of MEMRI.

“Our goal was to ignite an intifada in the West Bank and Jerusalem as well as within the 1948 borders [Israel]. The activity of the people has broadened to include all the occupied land, reaching its peak in the heroic operation, carried out by the Al-Qassam Brigades, in which three settlers were captured in Hebron. There has been a lot of confusion regarding this operation. Some said that this was a conspiracy of the occupation [Israel]. That’s not true. Your brothers in the Al-Qassam Brigades carried out this operation to support their imprisoned brothers who were on hunger strike.”

Al Qassam being the military wing of Hamas.

The terrorist killers of the three teenagers admit it was a Hamas operation:

Hossam Kawasmeh, arrested on July 11, admitted to leading cell which abducted and murdered Gil-Ad Schaer, Eyal Yifrach, and Naftali Frenkel; He received funds from Hamas.

Kawasmeh received funding for the terror attack from Hamas members in the Gaza Strip. He was arrested by Yamam, an elite counter-terror unit, following a tip from the Shin Bet.

Here Donnison tries to tell us Hamas is not like ISIS….

Trouble is, in essence it is true……their aims are the same and they work together indirectly…ISIS has few if any direct links with Hamas but it is an offshoot of Al Qaeda which is in Gaza….

Here is what a senior Hamas member said in 2007:

Zahar went on about the inevitability of Islamic rule in Gaza, the West Bank and across the Arab world.
“We believe that this is the era of change, that the coming decades will see Islamic rule in Arab countries,” he said. “I am not speaking about hopes here. I am just reading the reality. Today, even the thief, before he commits his crime, asks god to help him.”
“In a few years [Islam] can gather supreme power in the form of money, power, armies, human beings… from Morocco to Indonesia.”
“How are we going to manage the relationship between the West and Islam? If we are going to see each other as enemies we will see world war IV.”

…..and Hamas works hand in hand with Al Qaeda terrorists of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades:

Abdullah Azzam Brigades launches rocket attacks from Gaza

The Abdullah Azzam Brigades, which is named after al Qaeda’s co-founder and Osama bin Laden’s mentor, was formed by Saleh al Qarawi sometime after 2004 as an offshoot of al Qaeda in Iraq, and was tasked with hitting targets in the Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and the Palestinian Territories) and throughout the Middle East.

And here is Al Qaeda expressing its brotherhood and solidarity with ISIS:

“We announce solidarity with our Muslim brothers in Iraq against the crusade. Their blood and injuries are ours and we will surely support them……We stand by the side of our Muslim brothers in Iraq against the American and Iranian conspiracy and their agents of the apostate Gulf rulers.”

Sickeningly Donnison tries to hijack the Holocaust to defend his own anti-Israel stance against allegations that reporting such as his is responsible in part for a rise in anti-Semitism:

Donnison then links to a BBC article that is trying to play down anti-Semitism around the world….because it is implicated in its rise with coverage from the likes of…guess who…Jon Donnison….

Despite ‘The UK Association of Chief Police Officers, which has released statistics on hate crime since 2009, has talked of a “significant rise” in anti-Semitism since the latest fighting began in Gaza in early July’  apparently we’re, and they are, mistaken…..it’s not so much a rise in anti-Semitism…. it’s only an increased awareness of it…our perceptions distorted by a few eye catching, high profile mass killings…difficult to identify a trend…the picture is mixed…the questions asked in polls fail to adequately identify if it really is anti-Semitism….it could all be based on criticism of the Israeli government…and anyway….“We have many surveys, even before 1990. What they show is a decline in prejudice towards minorities, and especially towards Jews. Actually Jews are the best accepted minority in France….the Jews remain the most accepted group in France. We see the same thing in Europe.”

Ultimately it’s all in the Jew’s own little minds….’While the overall trends are harder to discern, the current nature and level of anti-Semitic incidents are enough to make some Jewish people feel afraid.’

Shame the BBC doesn’t ask a particular community how they feel about Jews….Kinda think wouldn’t then be ‘the most accepted group in Europe’ for that group.

Perhaps the BBC should also be asking who is carrying out the most anti-Semitic attacks.

Finally we have this from Donnison…..ironic considering Donnison’s exploitation of dead and injured women and children to peddle his support for Hamas:

So just how well did Donnison do?

He’s wrong about Hamas not kidnapping the Israeli teens.

He’s wrong about Hamas/ISIS not being alike.

He’s wrong about there being little anti-Semitism…which is the not so subtle drift of the BBC article he links to.

He relies on pictures of dead and injured women and children to get any interest in his stuff…and that interest is going to be mostly from pro-Hamas people praising his ‘journalism’.

He doesn’t like criticism of his ‘journalism’.  Which must be difficult for him all considered.

Suggest he go walk-about in Oz and stay away from Twitter and the porn.

On Friday Dominic Laurie was talking to the Bishop of Baghdad about the ISIS crisis (12:42)

Laurie unwittingly revealed all that informs the BBC mindset when dealing with Islam and its sword waving followers……He stated that…

‘This isn’t though a battle between Christianity and hardcore Islam is it, because there are other areas of the Muslim faith, other peoples who are also Muslims, who are also being persecuted…it’s complicated…and it’s just as well really isn’t it?’

Yes…how wonderfully multi-cultural.

Laurie’s last comment gives the game away…it’s just as well other Muslims are being persecuted as well as Christians.…why is it ‘just as well’?…..because otherwise we might think ‘Islam’ had launched a war against all non-Muslims….and that would be difficult with 3 million Muslims in this country.

The problem for the BBC, and what they don’t really want to emphasise, is that those so called ‘other Muslims’ are not considered to be Muslim by the Sunnis.

There is no Muslim civil war between Sunni and Shia…..just Islam against non-Islam….the  Shia are not considered Muslim.

An uncomfortable truth, but a truth none the less.

What is happening in the Middle East right now is an echo from the past when 1400 years ago when Islam first swept across the world….it is history come to life in a full colour, bloody, action replay.

The Roman and Persian empires were exhausted and unable to withstand the small but violent attacks by Muhammed and his followers who quickly established their own dominance…just as an apathetic America and broken Arab states failed to stem the tide of ISIS…….and if you think the murderous violence of ISIS shouldn’t be compared to Muhammed’s rampaging conquests think again…Muhammed slaughtered all the men of the Banu Qurayza and enslaved their women and children just as ISIS did to the Yazidis.

Historian Tom Holland writes in the Sunday Times:

The ghastly images posted by ISIS on social media have shocked the world but to the perpetrators their act is a symbol of conquest practised for millenia across the Middle East – and one sanctioned by the Koran.

“We went to meet our enemies with small abilities and weak forces,”as one medieval scholar put it, “and God made us triumph and gave us possession of their lands.”

Now after a year in which they have routed forces many times their size, conquered a swathe of territory larger than Britain and grown flush with gold and oil, the fighters of the Islamic State can justifiably make the same boast.

Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian admits ISIS are a blast from the past…but in true Guardian fashion dodges the truth and tries to equate them with European Barons and not Muhammed:

The state structures of both Iraq and Syria have all but collapsed. The result is a power vacuum of a kind that would have been recognised in the lawless Europe of seven or eight centuries ago – and which IS has exploited with the ruthless discipline of those long ago baronial warlords who turned themselves into European princes.

The BBC tries to dodge that question completely, preferring instead, in true BBC fashion, to tell us how wonderful medieval Islam was and how horrible Christian Europe was:

Isis and what it means to be modern

When you see the leader of Isis, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, in Mosul announcing the creation of a caliphate – an Islamic state ruled by a religious leader – it’s easy to think that what you’re watching is a march back into the past.

There’s actually little in common between the horribly repressive regime it has established in parts of Iraq and Syria and the subtle Islamic states of mediaeval times, which in Spain, for example, exercised a degree of tolerance at a time when the rest of Europe was wracked by persecution.

 

Damian Thompson in the Spectator said:

‘This point can’t be stressed too often — our leaders know next to nothing about world religions, including those whose adherents have arrived on their doorstep. They’d better start learning, fast.’

Douglas Murray said:

The black flag of ISIS is flying in London

When historians look back on Europe in this era, they will rub their eyes in disbelief. ISIS is carrying out actual genocide, ethnic and religious cleansing on the people of Syria and Iraq. Their exact ideological soul-mates in Hamas, Hezbollah and al-Qaeda are doing everything they can to set light to the same region. Right now the western states are finally talking of intervening in Iraq to stop ISIS wiping out the ancient Yazidi and Christians communities of Iraq. Yet we do nothing to stop the same murderous ideology thriving here.

Instead another pattern is set. When we see this disgusting ideology at work, as we have done for the last month, much of Europe turns its hatred onto the Saturday people for defending themselves. Israel continues to defend itself. And we may do something to hold back ISIS in Iraq. But what will we do in our societies when we finally realise that behind the flag of Hamas is the black flag of jihad, and that after failing to stand up for the Saturday people there will be fewer people left to stand up for the Sunday people?

Most importantly, what will we do when we wake up to the fact that, far from being in some neighbouring or far-flung country, we have allowed the enemy to plant itself deep inside our own countries?

The BBC had better start learning fast about religion and stop thinking how wonderfully multi-cultural it is that ISIS are so diverse in their killing spree, not just Christians but ‘other Muslims’ too.

Because it isn’t true.  They kill those they consider non-Muslims.

And their ideology is no different to that spread far and wide by Saudi Arabia into many countries around the world, including Britain….funding Mosques, universities, schools and Islamic centres that are intended to spread the message and capture new devotees.

The BBC does not bother its audience with the complexities and horrors of the conflict between Palestinians and Israel but instead offers  a vision not unlike Warsi’s and Clegg’s where Hamas are the heroes and Israel the villain.

Sayeeda Warsi and Nick Clegg are both eager to disarm the Israeli Defence Forces.

They don’t like the Israeli approach to self-defence as illustrated here…far too much disproportionate force….an unarmed little man being herded like an animal by a Jew at the point of a bayonet:

But they do seem entirely unconcerned about the all too likely outcome of their disarmament policy…strip the Israelis of their right to defend themselves and they swap a proud uniform for concentration camp pyjamas…the pogroms have already begun in Europe thanks to the willfully misleading reporting from the likes of the BBC:

From the Telegraph:

Moshe Dayan, then chief of the general staff, put it succinctly in 1956, in a eulogy at the graveside of a kibbutznik murdered by Arab infiltrators: “For eight years, they have sat in the refugee camps of Gaza, and have watched how we have turned their lands and villages, where they and their forefathers previously dwelled, into our home… Beyond the furrow of the border surges a sea of hatred and revenge… Let us not fear to look squarely at the hatred that consumes and fills the lives of hundreds [of thousands] of Arabs who live around us… This is our choice – to be ready and armed, tough and harsh – or else the sword shall fall from our hands and our lives will be cut short.”

[What does Hamas want?]

Like Isis in Iraq and Syria, like al Qaeda, the Shabab in Somalia and Boko Haram in Nigeria, it seeks to destroy Western neighbours.

The Nick Cleggs of this world, who call on Britain to suspend arms sales to Israel, are their accomplices. It’s as if they really don’t understand the world they live in, like those liberals in Britain and France who called for disarmament and pro-German treaty revision in the Thirties. But the message is clear. The barbarians truly are at the gates.

Today, standing in solidarity with the Warsis and Cleggs of this world,  the BBC proudly publishes photographs it has taken from Jon Donnison’s Twitter feed….you might think that there must be something wrong with the BBC’s guidelines if it allows its journalists to use Twitter to promote a terrorist organisation…seems not though.

In pictures: Faces from Gaza

Images taken by the BBC’s Jon Donnison in Gaza reveal the experiences of ordinary people amid the Israeli military operation to destroy tunnels and rockets used by militants. To see more of Jon’s pictures, follow him on Twitter @jondonnison.

No context at all from the BBC….just the usual stream of photographs of injured and despairing people, children mainly, designed not to bring you the facts to allow you to analyse the situation but intended to impact you purely on an emotional level and turn you against Israel.

Perhaps BBC reporters should have their own award, one that marks them out as those whose contribution to the breakdown of civilisation and the rising tide of anti-Semitism has been duly recognised…….something that reflects their integrity, professionalism and balanced, impartial reporting……

Here, from that previous Telegraph article, Benny Morris asks where is all that missing context in the Media?:

Israelis might argue that the (relatively) lightly armed Hamasniks in Gaza want to drive the Jews into the sea; that the struggle isn’t really between Israel and the Palestinians but between little Israel and the vast Arab and Muslim worlds, which long for Israel’s demise ; even that Israel isn’t the issue, that Islamists seek the demise of the West itself, and that Israel is merely an outpost of the far larger civilisation that they find abhorrent and seek to topple.

But television doesn’t show this bigger picture; images can’t elucidate ideas. It shows mighty Israel crushing bedraggled Gaza. Western TV screens never show Hamas – not a gunman, or a rocket launched at Tel Aviv, not a fighter shelling a nearby kibbutz. In these past few weeks, it has seemed as if Israel’s F-16s and Merkava tanks and 155mm artillery have been fighting only wailing mothers, mangled children, run-down concrete slums. Not Hamasniks. Not the 3,000 rockets reaching out for Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Beersheba. Not mortar bombs crashing into kibbutz dining halls. Not rockets fired at Israel from Gaza hospitals and schools, designed to provoke Israeli counterfire that could then be screened as an atrocity.

A vivid description from Benny Morris which perfectly outlines the likes of the BBC’s coverage which is shallow and unsophisticated, meant purely to persuade rather than to inform.

What the BBC deliberately avoids is the likely outcome should Hamas and its fellow travellers prevail and succeed in overrunning Israel.

What would Donnison’s Twitter feed look like then?

Here’s a bit of minority reporting from the future that attempts to predict that future…….a ‘future’ just as plausible as the BBC’s ‘present’ as depicted by its coverage of events in Gaza……

You may think that is a scenario that is way over the top, and hopefully you’d be right.  Islamist Hamas would never go that far…would they?

Then again….look at Syria and Iraq…….500 people being buried alive, Christians forced to convert or die, thousands executed in cold blood, severed heads held aloft by 7 year olds, whole peoples threatened with extinction and genocide.

Look at the Fogels, look at the 3 teenagers abducted and murdered on the orders of Hamas….look at the planned invasion of Israeli villages through the tunnels in September with the probable intent to kill as many Israelis, military or civilian, as possible.

They are capable of it.

The BBC’s journalists seem to be working, by design or stupidity, towards giving them the chance.

Tony Hall must be immensely proud of his swarm of highly trained journos bringing the complexities of the world to us in such simple but lucid and intense reports of the fighting between Hamas fighters and the IDF, the rigorous investigations of casualty figures, the many photographs of Hamas fighters firing from the vicinity of schools, hospitals and mosques,  the accurate analysis of who fired what when, the revelations about the massive transportation of goods into Gaza even as a war rages….the BBC isn’t just some cheap propaganda unit churning out Hamas friendly material…it brings you the truth.

Doesn’t it?

An interesting Tweet from the BBC’s Danahar…apparently the extreme Islamist radicals of Hamas are nothing like Al Qaeda or ISIS…..I imagine this Tweet can be placed alongside Bowen’s ‘moderate’ Muslim Brotherhood assertion….Hamas being part of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The BBC’s Danahar having a double whammy here…defending Hamas, as seems to be an urgent priority for BBC correspondents just now ( ‘It’s very important to note that Hamas didn’t fire the first rockets on Friday’ Yolande Knell told us….just many of the rest)

Donnison is on the case as well….

…and Danahar is having a go at Netanyahu as well….seemingly another favourite target that BBC journos like to try and ‘Fisk’.

Douglas Murray in the Spectator thinks different….and the radicals are on our streets right now:

The black flag of ISIS is flying in London

When historians look back on Europe in this era, they will rub their eyes in disbelief. ISIS is carrying out actual genocide, ethnic and religious cleansing on the people of Syria and Iraq. Their exact ideological soul-mates in Hamas, Hezbollah and al-Qaeda are doing everything they can to set light to the same region. Right now the western states are finally talking of intervening in Iraq to stop ISIS wiping out the ancient Yazidi and Christians communities of Iraq. Yet we do nothing to stop the same murderous ideology thriving here.

Instead another pattern is set. When we see this disgusting ideology at work, as we have done for the last month, much of Europe turns its hatred onto the Saturday people for defending themselves. Israel continues to defend itself. And we may do something to hold back ISIS in Iraq. But what will we do in our societies when we finally realise that behind the flag of Hamas is the black flag of jihad, and that after failing to stand up for the Saturday people there will be fewer people left to stand up for the Sunday people?

Most importantly, what will we do when we wake up to the fact that, far from being in some neighbouring or far-flung country, we have allowed the enemy to plant itself deep inside our own countries?

Note this rather terrifying revelation….that senior Tories are ready to pander to Islamist extremists and tailor our foreign policy to suit them:

Tory minister: Govt ‘failure’ on Gaza is sowing seeds of General Election defeat

I’ve just spoken to another Tory minister who is unhappy, and worried particularly about the effects that this will have on the Conservatives’ chances next year. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the minister tells me:

‘Warsi knows that our failure in Gaza will damage any change of our Northern marginals and South East Lutons and Watfords. The Lib Dems will probably now keep Muslim voters who might have switched over to Labour and got us a gain. I fear Dave might have sown the seeds of our defeat at the General Election.’

 

The BBC of course has itself long pandered to those same Muslim activists and pushed the narrative they favour, that foreign policy drives the radicalisation of Muslims.

Jon Donnison helps that along with his views on the Gaza conflict and who is ‘guilty’ of helping Israel:

Happily Donnison is being shipped out…but only to be replaced by Connolly:

The saddest thing about Donnison’s emotive manipulation and exploitation of injured or homeless Gazan children used to undermine Israel is that he has no intention of examining the real roots of their problems….that these childrens’ lives are a long misery with blighted futures, interspersed with enormous violence and danger, because of the policies of the terrorist groups he and his fellow travellers of the BBC turn a blind eye to….indeed sometimes even shed a tear for….One expert on ‘conflict resolution’ on 5Live today (12:50) stated that 92% of Gazans wanted a truce and were being failed by their leadership…Dominic Laurie, standing in for Fogarty, ignored that rather important point.

These children, and generations of children before them, could have been living completely different lives had the Palestinian leadership decided to spend their time, energy and money on building a Palestinian state, an economy, a society.

Instead they fund terror and tunnels and the BBC quietly applauds them and their ‘resistance’.

Bright futures destroyed by pandering to a dream which turned into a nightmare.

The correct use of words and phrases is essential when trying to communicate your message accurately and clearly to an audience…Theresa May hopefully recognises this after her disastrous use of the phrase ‘The nasty party’ in reference to the Tories, a phrase that will now haunt the Tories forever more.

The Israelis already know that the media will leap on any nuanced or mangled phrase and use it to propagate their own conspiracy theories.

Jon Donnison has recently done just that in an attempt to discredit the Israeli position that Hamas was responsible for the kidnap and killing of its three teenagers…via Is the BBC biased?:

Israeli police MickeyRosenfeld tells me men who killed 3 Israeli teens def lone cell, hamas affiliated but not operating under leadership1/2
— Jon Donnison (@JonDonnison) July 25, 2014

Israeli police spokes Mickey Rosenfeld also said if kidnapping had been ordered by Hamas leadership, they’d have known about it in advance.
— Jon Donnison (@JonDonnison) July 25, 2014

Donnison’s Tweets had a dramatic effect:

The twittersphere exploded with I-told-you-so’s from pro-Palestinian activists, who claimed Israel had manipulated events surrounding the killing of the teens to prepare for and justify its assault on Gaza, which has since killed more than 1,000 Palestinians

Rosenfeld said that he had told Donnison what the Israeli government had been saying all along. “The kidnapping and murder of the teens was carried out by Hamas terrorists from the Hebron area,” he told The Daily Beast. “The security organizations are continuing to search for the murderers.”

Ironically the BBC’s not so impartial journalist Jon Donnison is now complaining of Israeli ‘spin’ and doing his best to undermine Israel’s PR effort in the face of a pro-Hamas and hostile media…such as the BBC.

Donnison and his anti-Israel cohorts are merely regurgitating very old news….the  Israel Project’s 2009 GLOBAL LANGUAGE DICTIONARY came out in 2009 as might be guessed from the title and was immediately leaked.

Why is Donnison linking to 5 year old news just now…and why is he so concerned with Israeli PR and attempts to discredit it?  Why is he, a BBC journalist, trying to blacken the name and reputation of other journalists?….journalists who may take a more even handed approach to reality.

Donnison would be justified in linking to the document itself if he can show it is in use by Israeli officials…but he offers no proof.  He is certianly not justified in linking to Patrick Cockburn’s article in ‘Counterpunch’ which is itself nothing but spin, anti-Israeli black propaganda.

And which organisation doesn’t have guidelines on how to talk to the Media or the Public?

The BBC itself has extensive ‘spin’ :

The BBC’s Editorial Values

Audiences are at the heart of everything we do.

We are committed to giving them high-quality, original and at times challenging output.  Creativity is the lifeblood of our organisation.

Equally, we must give our audiences content made to the highest editorial and ethical standards.  Their trust depends on it.

We must therefore balance our presumption of freedom of expression with our responsibilities, for example to respect privacy, to be fair, to avoid unjustifiable offence and to provide appropriate protection for our audiences from harm.

This is of course the BBC’s famous guidance on reporting ‘terrorism’:

The relevant Editorial Guideline states:

Use of Language

11.4.5 We must report acts of terror quickly, accurately, fully and responsibly.  Terrorism is a difficult and emotive subject with significant political overtones and care is required in the use of language that carries value judgements.  We try to avoid the use of the term “terrorist” without attribution.  When we do use the term we should strive to do so with consistency in the stories we report across all our services and in a way that does not undermine our reputation for objectivity and accuracy.

The word “terrorist” itself can be a barrier rather than an aid to understanding. We should convey to our audience the full consequences of the act by describing what happened.  We should use words which specifically describe the perpetrator such as “bomber”, “attacker”, “gunman”, “kidnapper”, “insurgent”, and “militant”.  We should not adopt other people’s language as our own; our responsibility is to remain objective and report in ways that enable our audiences to make their own assessments about who is doing what to whom.

11.4.6 For similar reasons, it is also usually inappropriate to use, without attribution, terms such as “liberate”, “court martial” or “execute” in the absence of a clear judicial process.

Perhaps Donnison should give them a read and have a look at his own work before he presumes to lecture others……..

This is what Donnison links to….an article that is clearly designed not to enlighten but to encourage anti-Israeli hate, trying to portray everything the Israelis say as mere spin and lies to cover up war crimes and atrocities….but what war crimes and atrocities?

How Israel Spins War Crimes

by PATRICK COCKBURN

The Israel project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary should be required reading for everybody, especially journalists, interested in any aspect of Israeli policy because of its “dos and don’ts” for Israeli spokesmen.
These are highly illuminating about the gap between what Israeli officials and politicians really believe, and what they say, the latter shaped in minute detail by polling to determine what Americans want to hear.
On every occasion, the presentation of events by Israeli spokesmen is geared to giving Americans and Europeans the impression that Israel wants peace with the Palestinians and is prepared to compromise to achieve this, when all the evidence is that it does not.

This is the Independent’s own spin on the story…..Patrick Cockburn being an Independent journalist…..

The secret report that helps Israel hide facts

The headline is already trying to twist your thoughts by claiming Israel is hiding the facts…but nowhere does it say what facts are being hidden, in fact in a later article Cockburn complains that the Israelis want you to know the facts and not just the ‘message’….

“Don’t confuse messages with facts,” Dr Luntz advises the spokesmen as he explains how facts should be selected and best presented to make Israel’s case.

The Israelis can’t win….Cockburn thinks any ‘message’ such as Israelis having empathy for Palestinians and wanting to live in peace together is a lie……he gives this as an example of such a  ‘lie’:

 “The day will come when Israeli children and Palestinian children will grow up together, play together, and work together side-by-side not just because they have to but because they want to.”

Cockburn however admits if it is spin it doesn’t work……

‘A Gallup poll shows that among Americans aged between 18 and 29 some 51 per cent said Israel’s actions were unjustified while only 23 per cent said they were.’

The Independent is so desperate for this negative narrative about Israeli propaganda to take off that it has Cockburn have another go two days later:

Israel’s propaganda machine is finally starting to misfire

Cockburn says that Israel is making outrageous claims that Hamas welcomes dead civilians:

For all the good advice of Dr Luntz there are signs of Israeli leaders getting rattled. Mr Netanyahu complained on CNN that Hamas wants “to pile up as many civilian dead as they can” and “to use telegenically dead Palestinians for their cause.”

Curious though that even BBC journalists admit Hamas exploit dead civilians for propaganda purposes….

Hamas’s military leaders might be calculating that the sight of Palestinian civilians suffering under terrifying aerial bombardment will force the Palestinian Authority to show much greater solidarity and prompt Arab governments to show more support.

Hamas might reason that there were few advantages in keeping the peace whereas once hostilities have started it can demand concessions for agreeing to end them.

Israel might argue that it’s trying to avoid civilian casualties while Hamas is trying to cause them. But television pictures of civilian dead in Gaza – especially children – will help shape perceptions of Israel round the world.

The Independent…Masters of spin themselves….

Thank god we’ve got the honest and impartial BBC to bring us the real truth….oh hell!!!…no!!…they’re busy spreading the Independent’s smears and lies as well……but then who needs the Independent to do the dirty work when you can do your own:

 From Is the BBC biased?:

@HughNaylor @CiFWatch is not a real organization, just a crappy smear campaign run by a couple of dunderheads
— Bekah Wolf (@BekahWolf) July 27, 2014

And who exactly is this Bekah Wolf who doesn’t reckon much to CiF Watch?

Bekah Wolf @BekahWolf Founded @PalestinePSP with my husband Mousa Abu Maria. I live in the U.S. and in Beit Ommar, #Palestine. Have worked in Palestine since 2003

Nick Casey, The Wall Street Journal’s Middle East Correspondent, posted a photo to Twitter of a Hamas spokesman being interviewed on camera at Gaza’s Shifa Hospital, which Hamas uses as a base. Photo: Nick Casey / Twitter.

WSJ Reporter in Gaza Wonders How Patients in Shifa Hospital Feel About Hamas Using it as Base

Posting a photo to Twitter of a Hamas spokesman being interviewed on camera, Nick Casey, The Wall Street Journal‘s Middle East Correspondent, wondered how patients there might feel about Hamas using the hospital as a “de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices,” as reported by The Washington Post last week.

On Monday, Casey wrote: “You have to wonder [with] the shelling how patients at Shifa hospital feel as Hamas uses it as a safe place to see media.”

Journalist Describes Interrogation at Hamas Headquarters Next to Emergency Room at Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital

Radjaa Abu Dagga, Gaza correspondent for France’s Libération, told the newspaper‘s readers on Tuesday how Hamas refused his requests to leave Gaza and how he was interrogated by Hamas members from their headquarters inside Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital, a violation of international rules of war.

A few meters from the emergency room where the injured from bombings are constantly flowing, in the outpatient department, he was received in ‘a small section of the hospital used as administration’ by a band of young fighters. They were all well dressed, which surprised Radjaa, ‘in civilian clothing with a gun under one’s shirt and some had walkie-talkies.’  He was ordered to empty his pockets, removing his shoes and his belt then was taken to a hospital room ‘which served that day as the command office of three people.’

Remarkable how no one at the BBC, least of all Jeremy Bowen, saw any of this Hamas activity whilst they reported day in day out from Al-Shifa hospital.

This is John Reed of the FT:

From Haaretz (paywalled)

Compromised coverage: Can the BBC really report from Gaza?

Can the BBC and other international news networks really provide ‘war reporting of the highest standards’ from Gaza when their staff are threatened by Hamas enforcers?

Reference ‘The World Tonight’  (22 mins)  ‘War reporting of the highest standard’ according to UN bod.

‘UNRWA also acknowledged on Thursday that Hamas fired into the Beit Hanoun area, where the agency’s school was hit, according to Israel’s Channel 2 News.’

But not according to the BBC who didn’t report UNRWA saying that….nor did they report this….

 ‘The Israel Defense Forces has counted at least 100 rockets fired by Hamas as striking within Gaza.’

But of course we all know, thanks to the BBC, that Hamas’ ‘homemade contraptions’ are harmless….so this couldn’t possibly be down to them……..

Some sort of explosive weapon has hit a school in Gaza, the BBC says it was a ‘shell’….only the Israelis use ‘shells’…..

Gaza UN school shelter hit, ‘killing 15’

At least 15 people were killed and more than 200 injured when a UN-run school used as a shelter in Gaza came under fire, Gazan health officials say.

Palestinian families were in the school in Beit Hanoun, fleeing Israel’s offensive against Hamas militants.

Correspondents say pools of blood lay on the ground in the courtyard of the school in Beit Hanoun, and there was a large scorch mark where it appeared a shell had hit.

Chris Gunness, a spokesman for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees (Unrwa), also said the Israeli army had been formally given the co-ordinates of the shelter in Beit Hanoun.

There is a clear implication that the Israeli army did this despite the BBC reporting this:

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement that …….”In the course of the afternoon, several rockets launched by Hamas from within the Gaza Strip landed in the Beit Hanoun area. The IDF is reviewing the incident,” it said.

Not only does the BBC not report that UNRWA confirms Hamas rockets fell short but it doesn’t report that UNRWA also confirmed that it had been warned to evacuate the area…the BBC instead preferring to say UNRWA ‘also said the Israeli army had been formally given the co-ordinates of the shelter in Beit Hanoun.‘   That is clearly meant to imply the Israelis hit the school despite knowing its exact location.

The BBC doesn’t bother with this:

Both the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Chris Guinness, the UNRWA spokesman, confirm that the IDF had asked UNRWA to evacuate the Beit Hanoun school (Hamas’ official position on the strike is not yet clear). The IDF was planning to target what it claimed were nearby Hamas rocket launchers.

Others choose to highlight it could have been a Hamas rocket…note once again Hamas prevents evacuation:

IDF Says Bombing, Deaths at Gaza UNRWA School May be From Hamas Rocket Falling Short

“During the afternoon a battle took place between Hamas terrorists and IDF forces in the Beit Hanoun area. Besides that, we indeed have indications that rockets fell in the vicinity, fired by Hamas from within Gaza in the Beit Hanoun vicinity,” the spokesman said.

Later in the evening, the IDF tweeted that “Last night, we told Red Cross to evacuate civilians from UNRWA’s shelter in Beit Hanoun btw 10 am & 2 pm. UNRWA & Red Cross got the message.”

“Hamas prevented civilians from evacuating the area during the window that we gave them,” they army said in a second tweet, adding that “Today Hamas continued firing from Beit Hanoun. The IDF responded by targeting the source of the fire.”

UNRWA also acknowledged on Thursday that Hamas fired into the Beit Hanoun area, where the agency’s school was hit, according to Israel’s Channel 2 News.

An absolutely genuine photo of Hamass leader Khaled Meshaal in exile according to my good mate in Israeli Psyops.

Good though that the BBC gives the leader of Hamas in exile, Khaled Meshaal, plenty of airtime:

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal told the BBC he wants a ceasefire and end to Israel’s blockade as soon as possible.

“We don’t want to be controlled by a border crossing that makes Gaza the biggest prison in the world,” Mr Meshaal, who lives in exile in Qatar, told BBC Hardtalk.

“People cannot go for medical treatment or to work. Why are the people of Gaza being punished by a slow death in the world biggest prison. This is a crime.”

The BBC has often opined that Gaza is destitute and failing, lacking resources to build its infrastructure…indeed it highlights Ban Ki-Moon trying to blame the Israeli blockade for the rocket attacks on Israel:

Mr Ban is due to travel to Israel for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and meetings with Palestinian officials in the West Bank.

Mr Ban said he appreciated Israel’s right to defend itself, but said restrictions on Gaza should be lifted “so that people should not resort to this kind of violence as a way of expressing their grievances”.

The blockade is of course a response to those very rocket attacks…so Moon’s logic fails me there. Good though that such a deep thinker is at the head of the United Nations in charge of peace negotiations.

The BBC frequently tells us that Gazan civilians have no where to go to take cover when the fighting begins.

But that’s just not true is it?

For a start thousands of Gazans fled to UN controlled safe areas, in agreement with Israel.

Second, instead of investing in the people of Gaza Hamas has been building a large number of tunnels, lined with concrete, some up to one mile long.

They took years to plan and build.

With all those resources Hamas has used to build these tunnels to attack Israel they could have used to build schools, homes or indeed bomb shelters.

The tunnels themselves could be used as shelters if Hamas were so concerned about their civilians.

Or indeed Hamas could just stop bombing Israel and killing Israelis and there would be no need for shelters, no need for a blockade and Palestinians could get on with their lives turning the rat trap of Gaza into a thriving society as Israel has done with its own land even whilst under 65 years of Muslim attacks designed to wipe it off the face of the earth.