'Dateline' - Guest of (Dis)Honour

Craig: One of the BBC's regular programmes which has long seemed to me to be among the corporation's most clearly biased is its weekly gathering of journalists and commentators from across the globe to discuss issues of topical importance, Dateline London, hosted by Gavin Esler. 

I have been trying on this blog to be as open-minded as possible, but the evidence has been clear as regards Dateline for ages that the answer to the question 'Is the BBC biased?' is, at least in this case, an emphatic 'Yes!'. 

It got to the stage about four years ago when I started texting the programme each week to complain about the skewed composition of its panels. As that made not one jot of difference (and was costing me money!), I began keeping note of who those guests were each week. I did that from mid-June 2009 to the end of May 2010, give up monitoring it for five months (due to BBC fatigue), then restarted again at the end of October 2010, continuing right up to the present day. 

I'll expand on why I feel the programme to be such a clear example of BBC bias as the blog proceeds, but I want to begin with a list of all the guests who have appeared on the programme over those periods, now totally some three years'-worth of programmes. 

Instead of one long list, I'll break it down into three shorter ones - each covering around a year. This will show the programme's sheer consistency over time. 

Guests  18 June 2009-29 May 2010

Abdel Bari Atwan 11

Thomas Kielinger 10

Stryker McGuire 9

Janet Daley 8

Marc Roche 8

Mustapha Karkouti 7

Yasmin Alibhai Brown 6

Michael Goldfarb 6

Vincent Magombe 6

Polly Toynbee 5

Annalisa Piras 5

Saul Zadka 5

Laura Lynch 5

Shahed Sadullah 5

Catherine Mayer 4

Mina al Oraibi 4

Diane Wei-Lang 4

Eunice Goes 4

Isobel Hilton 4

Greg Katz 4

Agnes Poirier 4

Henry Chu 4

Nazenin Ansari 3

Ned Temko 3

John Fisher Burns 3

Steve Richards 3

Adam Raphael 3

Brian O'Connell 3

Amir Taheri 3

Ann Leslie 3

Michael White 3

Kate Dourian 3

Ali Bahaijoub 2

Michael Griffin 2

Bernard Burrell 2

Bruce Anderson 2

Johann Hari 2

Tom Fenton 2

David Aaronovitch 2

Jef McCallister 2

Ashis Ray 2

Tom Bemis 1

Stephanie Kennedy 1

Rauf Khalid 1

Daniella Peled 1

Michael Gove 1

Abdul Khalek al Abdullah 1

Mohammed Alnaqbi 1

Francis Matthews 1

Mary Jordan 1

Doyle McManus 1

Uwe Schmitt 1

Sarju Kaul 1

Tyler Brule 1

Peter Oborne 1

Abdullah Homouda 1

Tererai Karimakawenda 1

Hassan Fatah Pasha 1

Abdullah Abdul Khalid 1

Nima Abu Wardeh 1

Anthony Faiola 1

Guests  30 October 2010-29 October 2011

Abdel Bari Atwan 16

Michael Goldfarb 13

Thomas Kielinger 10

Mustapha Karkouti 9

Stryker McGuire 7

Polly Toynbee 7

Marc Roche 7

Agnes Poirier 7

Janet Daley 7

Vincent Magombe 6

Saul Zadka 6

Annalisa Piras 5

Greg Katz 5

Ned Temko 5

Ann Leslie 5

Ashis Ray 5

Eunice Goes 5

Tim Montgomerie 5

Yasmin Alibhai Brown 4

Laura Lynch 4

Henry Chu 4

Michael White 4

Jef McCallister 4

Nabila Ramdani 4

Brian O'Connell 3

Abdullah Homouda 3

Shahed Sadullah 3

Catherine Mayer 3

Adam Raphael 3

Ali Bahaijoub 3

David Aaronovitch 3

John Fisher Burns 3

Mina al Oraibi 2

Diane Wei-Lang 2

Nazenin Ansari 2

Simon Jenkins 2

Bernard Burrell 2

Steve Hewlett 2

Isobel Hilton 1

Steve Richards 1

Amir Taheri 1

Kate Dourian 1

Tonje Iversen 1

Johann Hari 1

Paola Totaro 1

Will Hutton 1

Francis Matthews 1

Bruce Orwell 1

Ashur Shamis 1

Xinran Xue 1

Jonathan Sacerdoti 1

Hassan Fatah Pasha 1

Abdul Aziz 1

Bernard Purcell 1

Nesrine Malik 1

Anthony Faiola 1

Guests  5 November 2011-10 November 2012

Abdel Bari Atwan 13

Mustapha Karkouti 10

Michael Goldfarb 9

Thomas Kielinger 9

Polly Toynbee 8

Marc Roche 8

John Fisher Burns 7

Stryker McGuire 6

Agnes Poirier 6

Greg Katz 6

Ann Leslie 6

Ashis Ray 6

Henry Chu 6

Mina al Oraibi 6

Janet Daley 5

Vincent Magombe 5

Saul Zadka 5

Eunice Goes 5

Tim Montgomerie 5

Michael White 5

Catherine Mayer 5

Dimitri Shiskin 5

Ned Temko 4

Yasmin Alibhai Brown 4

Jef McCallister 4

David Aaronovitch 4

Isobel Hilton 4

Maria Margaronis 4

Nabila Ramdani 3

Abdullah Homouda 3

Steve Richards 3

Nesrine Malik 3

Annalisa Piras 2

Brian O'Connell 2

Adam Raphael 2

Diane Wei-Lang 2

Nazenin Ansari 2

Bernard Burrell 2

Kate Dourian 2

Francis Matthews 2

Anthony Faiola 2

Tererai Karimakawenda 2

Ian Birrell 2

Shahed Sadullah 1

Simon Jenkins 1

Amir Taheri 1

Jake Awagah Addison 1

Benedicte Paviot 1

Hassan Fatah Pasha 1

Cornelia Fuchs 1

Annette Dittert 1

Sultan al-Qassemi 1

The first thing you'll probably notice from skimming these lists is the fact that one man continually tops Dateline's invitations chart, across all three roughly-year-long periods - the London-based Palestinian journalist Abdul Bari Atwan.  

Add the three lists together and you find that Atwan has beaten his nearest 'rival', the charming veteran German journalist Thomas Kielinger, by a large and decisive margin:

Abdel Bari Atwan 40

Thomas Kielinger 29

Michael Goldfarb - 28

Mustapha Karkouti - 26

Stryker McGuire - 24

Marc Roche - 23

Polly Toynbee - 20

Janet Daley - 20

Abdel Bari Atwan is editor-in-chief of the provocatively titled pan-Arabic daily newspaper, Al-Quds Al-Arabi - which means 'Arab Jerusalem'. Bari (as Dateline presenter Gavin Esler usually alls him) is controversial because his critics frequently accuse him of speaking honeyed words (up to a point) to Western ears while speaking vile, poisonous anti-Israel, anti-Western hate into Arabic ears. A flavour of the man can be got from his Wikipedia profile. As is often the case with Wikipedia though, the article has clearly received the 'helping hand' of someone sympathetic to Atwan. 

Here are a selection of clickable pieces which should give you a feel for why some many people are appalled about Abdel Bari:

Hussein Ibish

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Nota Sheep 

Harry's Place

(and last but far from least...) Sue - of Biased BBC (and, even more, Is the BBC biased?) fame

The decision to invite him to be a guest on the programme is cause enough for many people to complain to the BBC. The decision to invite him onto the programme more than anyone else is surely cause for any reasonable person to complain. 

Incidentally, in the light of all this the following (from may 2011) might well strike you as ironic, to say the least:.

Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of London-based newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi, claimed the BBC had scaled down his appearances on its channels because of pressure from the Israeli Embassy.

He said: "These people in the BBC are terrorised by email campaigns [from the pro-Israel lobby]. Every time I'm on there are hundreds of emails. They are biased in their coverage. They don't want our Palestinian voices to be heard. Where is the impartiality?"

Someone at the BBC obviously didn't send the memo to Dateline. Atwan is on that programme more than anyone else, by some margin...and he's still whining! 

The BBC (and its defenders) sometimes say 'Well, pro-Israeli people complain about the BBC's coverage and pro-Palestinian people also complain about the BBC's coverage, so the BBC must be getting it about right'. Well, 40 appearances by the anti-Israel Atwan, 11 more than any other guest. This certainly seems to give the lie to that. Dateline has (has it not?) clearly chosen to favour the pro-Palestinian side. 

Sue: So Abdel Bari Atwan is top of the pops. The BBC is mischievous. They hope sparks will fly so that their programmes are interesting, as a spectator sport, for people with a low boredom threshold. In that vein, they’d have Adolph Hitler on Dateline, or Abu Qatada. But at least the audience would know who those gentlemen are and what they stand for. As it is, the BBC is bashful. Atwan is described as a middle east expert.  That’s like introducing a wily old fox to a fluffy chicken and calling him an expert on rural affairs.

Several people I’ve never heard of are on that list. I like Ann Leslie on Dateline. Anything she decides to say is usually overwhelmed by patterned clothing and glinting accessories,  but I was startled once when her gravelly sixty a day voice suddenly piped up with this criticism of Jews. :”Jewish people mistakenly say Shylock is antisemitic” she opined, knowingly, and Gavin Esler nodded with approval.

Not really, Ann.  It’s  antisemites who use the Shylock character as an illustration of the miserly nature of the evil Jew. 

In case you haven’t seen for yourself, Ann adorns herself with garments of multiple textures and patterns, and bling. Her hair is tousled, wispy and streaked varied shades of blond, and her eyebrows are heavily pencilled in, in the shape of arrowheads. Blue eyeshadow and coral lipstick  battle with a mottled animal-print top worn over a pointy-collared shiny polyester blouse, topped with a straggly fur waistcoat with an extra-furry shawl collar.  Dangly double-drop pearl earrings, a chunky gold chain necklace and several gold bracelets, complete the look. Just right for Dateline.

Craig: In fairness to the dame, she's generally a wise old bird. She makes an honourable appearance in Nick Cohen's New Statesman essay about anti-Semitism, warning him about the deluge of anti-Semitism about to come his way from the Left for daring to adopt the 'wrong' position on ME issues. He doesn't believe her until it happened. 

Talking of Nick Cohen, did you read his impressive Standpoint essay from earlier this year, How the Left turned against the Jews?

Ed and David Miliband's dad gets a good press in that article - which is something you would read about in the comments field of a certain blog! 

Now, there's someone (Nick) who would add a bit of interest to the staid cast-list of Dateline. Nick Cohen v Barry Atwan. If they want sparks to fly, sparks would undoubtedly fly and Atwan might even literally explode with rage (which wouldn't do Ann Leslie's immaculate appearance any good).

Sue: I don’t think it would make much difference. I’m not totally obsessed with people’s appearance by the way. Just a bit. My point was that we don’t get full and frank explanations of who these people really are, so we can view them through our special propaganda reactolite specs.

For example BBC4 World News just gave Mustafa Barghouti  about three minutes of airtime to tell a string of porkie pies -for example that Israel’s assassination of Ahmed Said Khalil al-Jabari was unprovoked, that Israel had constantly broken numerous ceasefires simply because it doesn’t want peace, and what’s more there have been no rockets aimed at Israel from Gaza. When seconds later he insisted that Hamas had no influence over the group that had sent hundreds of rockets into Israel in the last few days, the lady interviewer had little choice but to interrupt. The discrepancy was just too damned obvious.

No platform was given to an Israeli spokesperson.

 

Over on Channel 4, Matt Frei (pudgier than ever) had a chat with Mark Regev. Channel 4 seems to have some sort of special license to be rude to Mark Regev, and Matt made full use of it. He put the most tired, unimaginative “I’m not listening to you’ questions, and then carried through by not listening to the answers, but at least they gave Mark Regev a few minutes on air.

Over on BBC News 24, they did a little better, with a reasonably respectful interview with Jonathan Sacerdoti. He even managed to mention Jeremy Bowen in one of his answers, in respect of Jeremy's annoying innuendo about the relevance of the current escalation in violence to the upcoming Israeli elections, with which Sacerdoti took issue, with, in my humble opinion, justification and quiet conviction.

Sacerdoti was introduced as “Director of Public Affairs at the Zionist Federation that campaigns on behalf of Israel.”  I didn’t catch how they introduced Barghouti, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t tell us he was a pro-Palestinian purveyor of (Halal) porkie-pies. 

Craig: Talking of whom....Jonathan Sacerdoti makes just one appearance in the lists above. My comment on Biased BBC at the time (January 2011) ran as follows:

At least there was also Jonathan Sacerdoti, making his first - and doubtless also last - appearance. He did well, but faced regular interruptions from Atwan, Polly Toynbee and Gavin Esler (and a couple of "I'll come back to you in a second"s from Esler to boot).  

That guess proved correct. He's never been back since. (Unlike Abdel Bari Atwan.) His face obviously does't fit. Maybe he should grow a Saddam-style moustache. That might get him on. 

"A distinguished writer on Arab affairs". Who could that be then?

Catching up time...

Having found a couple of consecutive editions of Dateline London to be unusually full of genuine debate and not tilted against Israel in their discussions of the present Gaza conflict, I missed last week's edition which shifted the balance firmly back towards the familiar Dateline position.

In the two previous editions, pro-Israeli guests had actually outnumbered pro-Palestinians guests. Last week's edition reversed that trend and had two pro-Palestinian guests - extremist left-wing Palestinian writer Abdel Barri Atwan and far-left Greek writer Maria Margaronis of The Nation - pitted against a pro-Israeli guest (and self-declared friend of Atwan), left-leaning Observer writer and former editor of the Jewish Chronicle Ned Temko. 

Barri and Maria fulminated against Israel, as expected. Ned trod a cautiously pro-Israel line. The final guest, French left-winger Marc Roche, disappointingly abandoned his previous denunciations of Hamas and adopted a "neutral" position (in the manner of his president). 

Plus, to make my jaw drop, presenter Maxine Mawhinney sucked up to Abdel Barri Atwan by introducing him as "a distinguished writer on Arab affairs". (Slurp, slurp!) I've watched Dateline for years and never heard anyone described like that before. (He's distinguished all right - if that means 'distinguished by his extremism and lack of regard for the truth' (a definition my dictionary doesn't seem to support)).

[Update: As Sue reminds me...]

There was a definite pro-Palestinian slant to last week's edition.  

This week's edition fell somewhere in between the other editions during this conflict. 

There was an American guest, Stephanie Baker, who offered no firm opinions on the matter (sticking to her U.S. political beat). Alongside her, however, were pro-Palestinian Arab writer Mustapha Karkouti and Ian Birrell of the Daily Mail. Ian Birrell, a former kibbutznik, has been vocal in the past few weeks in strongly denouncing Israel's actions in Gaza. The final guest, representing the pro-Israeli side, was Jonathan Sacerdoti.

Jonathan once prompted a comment from me at Biased BBC about an edition of Dateline from January 2011:

At least there was also Jonathan Sacerdoti, making his first - and doubtless also last - appearance. He did well, but faced regular interruptions from Atwan, Polly Toynbee and Gavin Esler (and a couple of "I'll come back to you in a second"s from Esler to boot).  

Well, I'll eat my words here. That wasn't his last appearance. Over three and a half years later (!), he got his second invite to the Dateline studio.

He was, however, the only guest on this edition who faced "regular interruptions from...Gavin Esler". No one else did. (That said though, he was given the first and last words).

All duly caught up again now (for what it's worth), so that's that then.

Jonathan Sacerdoti vs. The World (According to the BBC)

Bloggers should always watch the programmes they berate. 

Mea culpa, therefore. Having watched the first few minutes of today's Dateline, I saw red - or, more specifically, saw Palestinian extremist Abdel Bari Atwan - and switched off, hurrying instead to 'Is the BBC biased?' to do some further research on the programme's guest selection and point out its mad (and maddening) bias (see previous post) towards ol' Bari.

Sue, however, encouraged me to watch the whole thing though - and quite right too, because I missed a lot...

I'd failed to hang around long enough to hear flame-thrower Abdel Bari Atwan, talking about Benjamin Netanyahu, and saying, "He split the Jews himself". Yes, Jews. Not Israelis. (What is it with people with aggressive moustaches?)

I'd also missed his fellow flame-thrower, absurd, earnest, ranting, well-past-her-sell-by-date, ex-BBC home affairs editor Polly Toynbee, characteristically bolting to the extremes and calling Mr Netanyahu "far right". [Various other examples of Polly's tendency towards name-calling flew around during the British politics section at the end too - and two can play at that game, Pol.]

And I'd missed John Fisher Burns, the "dean" of the U.S. press corp [who I rather like and who is, on the whole, a reasonable man], complaining about Israel's behaviour, (like Bari and Polly) calling for for a U.S.-Iranian rapprochement, and blaming the West. (He clearly has some blind spots). 

Jonathan Sacerdoti's lonely, embattled presence as a defender of Israel [and my way of thinking] was something to be grateful for - but not too grateful for, given what Dateline flung at him. He was attacked on (at least) three fronts. (He made a decent fist of it though, in spite of everything hurled at him.) 

Ah, memories!...

I recall a comment I made at Biased BBC back in 2011 [which I can't, unfortunately, link to, but which I saved in my own drive when B-BBC was having technical problems], following Jonathan's first appearance on Dateline. I complained about how he "faced regular interruptions" from "Atwan, Polly Toynbee and Esler (and a couple of "I'll come back to you in a second"s from Esler to boot)". [I was far less polite back then]. 

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, as Dateline's very own Marc Roche might say.

Getting it wrong

“We get complaints from both sides. Ergo we must be getting it about right.” says the BBC.

Well. It looks as though they certainly do get complaints from both sides, but that’s not quite the same as getting it about right.

This pdf sets out decisions made by the BBC Editorial Standards Committee. A complaint from Hilary Aked about Jonathan Sacerdoti being “misleadingly introduced” as  “director of the Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy,” “in a way that “gave no clue as to his orientation”  was partially upheld because it “may indeed have contributed to an impression of impartiality”  The appeal upheld one out of two points raised.

According to the website 'Electronic Intifada' Hilary Aked is a “London-based freelance writer and researcher, an NCTJ-qualified journalist and a PhD student at the University of Bath researching the pro-Israel lobby in the UK. She has worked in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and also writes for Spinwatch, Ceasefire and Huffington Post.” Does that give a clue as to her orientation? or may it contribute to an impression of impartiality?  Fee fi fo fum; I sense irony. 

Nestling almost side by side with this spurious objection to Jonathan Sacerdoti’s intro (in the light of the countless times fanatical anti-Israel campaigners such as Abdel Bari Atwan are introduced as “Middle East experts”) is a complaint from the other side of the divide. It concerns a report we’ve mentioned here before,   when Claudia Hammond introduced a report on BBC World service about Gaza on a programme Health Check that included several inaccuracies and misleading statements.

The initial adjudication resulted in a mixed bag of “partially uphelds”  “not uphelds” “uphelds”  and a final “upheld with regard to impartiality as a whole”

On appeal - (page  15) it was found that the appropriate amendments to the article had not been made and that the website continues to give a misleading impression.

BBCWatch sets out the situation more fully here.

The anti-Israel lobby’s hair-trigger reaction when anything less than defamatory about Israel slips through the net is beginning to look desperate. I don’t know, but I think things are beginning to stack up against them. Like the behaviour of Hamas, for example. The Times has:(£)

Apollo

“The discovery of an ancient bronze statue of Apollo should be a cause for celebration among archaeologists and represent a windfall for its finder worth millions of pounds, but there is just one snag: the sculpture, one of a handful to survive from antiquity, cannot be sold, inspected or even exhibited, because it was found in the Gaza Strip
Experts who have seen the 6ft statue called it a “major discovery”and believe that it was forged at some point between the 5th century BC and the second century AD. Unusually the feet are intact and it has retained one of its eyes.It could fetch up to £17 million if sold at auction but the political situation is so fraught it may never be allowed to leave Gaza. It is also unlikely to go on display because Hamas, the political authority holding it regards the anatomically correct nude as both obscene and an idol.

[…] Among the crowd that quickly gathered were members of the al-Qassam Brigades, the militant wing of Hamas who took it away. They were obliged to give it up when the Hamas police force arrived, leading to an armed stand-off that only ended when police officers came to negotiate. The statue is being held in an office run by the Hamas interior ministry at a secret location in Gaza.

[…] Thomas Bauzou, a professor of ancient history at the University of Orleans, France believes that the statue is a major discovery but doubts that it was found in the sea. “The story has been fabricated to hide the real place where the statue was found so they can continue digging,” he said.

[…] He [Muhhamad Ismael Khillah] also suggested that it could be displayed in Gaza. “We will have to cover it in certain places” he said.

Ha ha. You’d have to have a heart of stone etc etc.

You’d think stories like this  and this would have a cumulative effect. And that the outrageous death threats over those cartoons would add up to something.  Someone will put two and two together one of these days. Surely?

My family and other bloggers

We bloggers tend to become a little incestuous.  We pat each other on the back, link to each other and I suppose we create our own little bubble.  Some might say we regurgitate, plagiarise, gossip, and preach to the choir.

Perhaps we’re almost as biased against the BBC as the BBC is biased against our politically incorrect viewpoints. Perhaps we all try hard not to let our biases cloud our ability to see the bigger picture. But the BBC hardly ever entertains the possibility that it could be at fault, and it’s powerful enough not to care.

The area of biased broadcasting that interests me most, (anti-Israel / pro-Palestinian reporting, casual antisemitism and the BBC’s incessant and insidious efforts to normalise Islamic practices and customs) has ramifications as wide as anyone cares to make them. 

One thing that has always troubled me is the way we allow people to get away with words and phrases that have become meaningless through over-use and laziness. I remember writing about this in July 2010. (updated)

“Constant repetition of a word or phrase can render it meaningless.Trotted out over and over again, words and phrases like  illegal war, apartheid and human rights violations lose their impact; particularly when they’re bandied about thoughtlessly by ill-informed people who have no idea whether they are justified, appropriate or the truth. 

We’re all trapped by words like peace, war, Zionist, Palestinian. Nazi. Fascist. Neocon.We say antisemitism, you say Islamophobia; we say terrorist, you say religion of peace; we say Islamic, you say unIslamic; we say legitimate, you say illegitimate; we say Israel, you say Zionist entity; we say biased, you say balanced. Tomato, potato, potahto, tomayto. Let’s call the whole Jeremy Bowen off.”

The BDS movement is gaining respectability with virtue-signalling student bodies and lefty ethical activists, and an atmosphere of antisemitism has gathered momentum to a terrifying degree. Even Oxford University, considered one of the top universities in the world, has succumbed.

Apartheid is a state-sanctioned discriminatory policy based on the obsolete principle of racial superiority / inferiority. Make no mistake, it has nothing to do with Israel or “What Israel is doing” to the Palestinians. Yet somehow, the apartheid state label has got itself attached to Israel in the minds of the anti-Israel activists who know no better.

Daphne Anson always manages to find disturbing videos of demos and protest marches that have taken place under our very noses here in the UK.  She ferrets out some extraordinary film clips, and from Australia, is able to see our  problem with antisemitism more clearly  than we do. 

She featured this video on her website recently (also on YouTube) It’s straight from a Channel Four News item addressing the governments latest guidelines on the BDS movement. 

That’s Channel Four, with its distinctly lefty, anti-Israel agenda, apparently unconstrained by those infamous obligations that force the BBC to perform all manner of linguistic contortions in the name of their charter’s impartiality pledge. 

Channel Four Newsroom’s figurehead’ is the unashamedly pro-Palestinian Jon Snow; Krishnan Guru-Murthy and Kathy Newman are his trusty sidekicks.

This particular exchange was chaired by Jon Snow, wearing one of his garish trademark ties  (graphic image of rainbow vomit)  It was an uncharacteristic challenge by Snow that rendered the BDS activist - not exactly speechless, but, it’s fair to say - incoherent. 

Using the oft-posed, pertinent and potentially stymieing gotcha, namely “why aint you boycotting Saudi Arabia?” he demolished her credibility with ease. 

In defence all she could offer was the well-worn retort:  “ I. Aint. Interested. In. Saudi. Arabia.” (reworded by me)

In the spirit of regurgitate, plagiarise and gossip, I bring you this from UK Media Watch (formerly CifWatch.)

Malia Bouattia, NUS Black Students’ Officer, currently arguing the case for BDS against Israel, actually argued (in October 2014) against a student union motion to boycott Islamic State. Not only that, but she did so on the grounds that ---wait for it -- doing that would be Islamophobic.

No bloody wonder she was momentarily lost for words.

Here is a summary of the film clip Channel Four ran by way of an introduction, preceding the studio chat.

“I think this is an attack on freedom, like, if I don’t wanna buy Israeli goods, I don’t wanna buy Israeli goods” said one of the first students interviewed.

This demonstrates so much stupidity, ignorance and illogicality that I hardly know where to start. But let’s remind ourselves of the government’s actual statement as outlined on the BBC website (The Moral Maze) 

“Now the government is planning a law to make it illegal for local councils, public bodies and even some university student unions to carry out boycotts. Under the plan all publicly funded institutions will lose the freedom to refuse to buy goods and services as part of a political campaign. It's said that any public bodies that continue to pursue boycotts will face "severe penalties." The government believes cracking down on town-hall boycotts is justified because they undermine good community relations, poison and polarise debate and fuel anti-Semitism.”

Do students really believe individuals are going to be made into criminals if they decide to personally avoid buying Israeli goods?

Another student, waving his arms around in lieu of articulacy asks “If I don’t go into a shop to buy Israeli goods, is that violent?

“Others agree with the government’s stance that boycotts undermine community relations and fuel antisemitism” said Assed Baig sounding very like Ali G, before approaching Jonathan Sacerdoti who said: 

“........ 84 percent of British Jewish people believed that boycotting Israeli produce constituted intimidation of Jewish people..

That was the gist of Sacerdoti’s  contribution, and one does wonder how much material was edited out of the film, which abruptly cut to footage of one of the historic demonstrations against South African apartheid. 

Current thinking seems to credit “us” with bringing about the end of South Africa’s apartheid system, solely or primarily because of “us” boycotting South African produce. I just wonder if world-wide anti-racist zeitgeist didn’t have just as much to do with that timely policy change. We never boycotted American produce, did we? I don’t think so. Yet cruel and shocking racism was once rife in the US, and state sanctioned, to boot.

“Actions like this are a vital tool,” say students. Rafeef Zidah (Palestinian society SOAS) says it’s disgraceful that government is attacking local democracy and stopping councils making ‘ethical decisions around investments’....... ‘we have the right to have an impact on corporations that we disagree with’....’and for Palestinian rights as well.’ 

Hang on. We have a democracy, which means we vote for our representatives. We don’t (yet) have anarchy, where we all take direct action against whatever we disagree with.

Here comes another bit of incestuous borrowing, this one is from Hadar at BBC Watch:

“Interestingly, that same spurious linkage was made in a statement put out by the BDS campaign’s Rafeef Ziadah (also an employee of ‘War on Want’) several hours before this programme went on air.”

I thought Ms Ziadah didn’t look like your average student. More about War on Want later.

“So what would you say to  those who say that boycotting Israeli goods is antisemitic?” asks Baig, in his best Ali G patois, addressing another student who said he was Jewish. His BDS advocacy (asaJew) is worth several bonus points  “Human rights violations”, he says, and “Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.”  “We shouldn’t confuse BDS with antisemitism” was his message, which is one way of putting Sacerdoti’s statement into PC perspective; you could almost hear the film editors crowing.

“The guidance comes when cabinet minister Matthew Hancock is visiting Israel and the government says that locally imposed boycotts can hinder Britain’s export trade” says Baig, to end the film. 

The implication of that narrative is crystal clear. The government’s guidance on BDS is purely a matter of self-interest, i.e., it’s cynical and mercenary. 

Cut to Jon Snow in the Channel Four News studio. Seated in the pro-Pali / BDS corner, Malia Bouattia representing the NUS, and in the Zio corner, James Sorene from BICOM. Both are extraordinary looking individuals. (Malia Bouattia has masses of hair, James Sorene has huge eyes.)

“There’s no criminal consequence to having a boycott” begins Jon Snow, addressing James Sorene.

“I think some of your reporting was a bit overblown” explains James. In respect of procurement - “they can’t discriminate on the basis of nationality.”  [..] “Most British people do not want a boycott - they believe it will hurt Israelis and Palestinians and only 12% believe a boycott will do anything at all.”

Perhaps they will remember the SodaStream fiasco, when anti-Israel pressure resulted in Palestinians having to forfeit secure and well-paid employment, all for “the cause”.  

“People want non-violent options in relation to facilitating, you know, solutions” says Malia Bouattia. 

How boycotts actually effect ‘solutions’, and what those ‘solutions’ would involve in the wildest imagination of the BDS movement remains to be explored.

Do boycotts hurt? asks Jon.

“The economic effect may be minimal,” says James, “but those who are close to what is a tragic, complex conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, which we all want resolved, is that this armchair activism will do nothing. Interfaith dialogue is needed, whereas boycotts just put up barriers and people stop talking.”

Not that talking to Hamas and /or Fatah seems even possible, let alone likely to bring about peace. Even less so in the current incendiary climate. Never mind, let wishful thinking prevail.

“We should look at history. Look at apartheid in South Africa.” says Malia.  

“If people didn’t take to the streets, if people didn’t campaign and enforce the implementation of a boycott as we did as the NUS, where did those conversations that went on for hundreds of years, go?We’ve seen continued expansion of settlements, we’ve seen continued abuses of human rights, of international law totally thrown in our faces and we have no trust in the processes that exist”

James Sorene says:

“People who know the facts know that it is nothing like apartheid, a criminal regime running a racist policy; this is completely different. Both parties are trying to reach a solution. They’ve been talking on and off for many years - they became very close to a solution - we need to keep working at that - government realises that boycotts in local communities are incredibly divisive, they whip up all sorts of ill-feeling and fear and the same thing happens in student unions. The Jewish students....

Jon interrupts:

“That’s about Israel, but what about other countries, I mean do you boycott Saudi Arabia, for example, for the human rights violations there, do you boycott Russia, for example, for human rights violations there?”

Malia:

“Um. I’m feeling slightly on trial as the leader of all boycotts worldwide. What we’re talking about here is the right to boycott, based on the fact that we feel there is a violation of human rights, of ethics, and we want to implement them and enforce them and some people will use words, like the non-violent solutions as the case of BDSing Israel. We have to come back to that question itself, that if people feel that this is in violation of those rights, then by all means implement those solutions and, you know,  these guidelines that are coming out will not just affect Palestinian activism or BDS for that matter, it expands to those campaigning on fossil-free, those campaigning on divesting on trade.....

Jon, turning to James: 

I’m bound to come back to...aside of the inter-communal tensions, which you’ve described - on the ground, it doesn’t have any impact does it? There is no effect in Israel at the moment.”

“There is a minimal effect,” says James, 

“ but let’s be honest. What Matthew Hancock was doing there - Britain needs Israel. We need Israeli hi-tech, we need Israeli scientific cooperation, one is (indecipherable) on the NHS from Israel .. we need Israel,. But the silence on the issue of  other boycotts speaks volumes to those people who will say that (unintelligible)

"We have to leave it. We’ve run out of time."

What I intended to highlight when I started this post, was the meaninglessness of phrases like “Human rights violations” when they are uttered in respect of Israel and the Palestinians. Another one  is “What Israel is doing to the Palestinians” and “Palestinian rights” 

“Human rights violations” sound like very terrible things, but what actually are they? Denying Palestinians the right of return? Denying Palestinians the right to eradicate Jews from “Muslim lands?” Violating their rights to stab a Jew because of the occupation? 

What terrible thing IS Israel ‘doing to the Palestinians?’ Trying to stop  them from attacking Israeli civilians ? Taking measures so that Israelis can live their lives without being stabbed, bombed or run down?

Palestinians do deserve human rights. That is they deserve to be divested from the hatred and lies they’re indoctrinated with from birth by believers of their own unnatural, self-loathing, Jew-hating religion. Palestinians should start boycotting Islam.

   

Pro Palestinian students and left-wing parrot-like ignoramuses get away with perpetuating all that lazy, historically illiterate nonsense because of biased, distorted, historically inaccurate reporting.

Tonight there’s a Moral Maze episode on this topic.    Let’s see what they have to say on the matter. Melanie Phillips is on the panel, with Matthew Taylor, Claire Fox and Jill Kirby.

Okay. We listened to the Moral Maze. Michael Buerk kept trying to broaden out the debate. He didn’t want it to be specific, lest it get bogged down in the Israel/Palestine question. But that’s precisely what it should have been about. The more bogged the better, in my opinion.

It emerged from the guy from War on Want, that one of the reasons they defended BDS was that the Palestinians requested it. Yup. The Palestinians requested it.

Jonathan Sacerdoti was one of the witnesses. He tried to bring the topic back to the core issue - antisemitism and intimidation of Jews, but Michael Buerk wasn’t happy with that. He steered the conversation away each time, which was irritating. 

Jill Kirby seemed to think they (Jews) should suck it up because she believes the principal of ethical boycotting is sound. 

I think I need to listen again in order to to absorb the whole thing properly. It wasn’t an entirely bad debate apart from Matthew Taylor’s constant interruptions and his habit of rudely talking over others.

(Why do lefties and Muslims always do that? Have they no manners?)

I’d like to thank my co-bloggers and the entire “BBC-bias” family; my parents - if it weren't for them I might not be here - and Mr Google for facilitating my research. Most of all, thanks to Israeli technology, without which none of this would be possible. Thank you thank you.

To the rest of you, go on, boycott Israel produce, all of it, and don’t forget to wipe your hard-drives before you destroy your equipment or donate it to a good cause. The Palestinians, maybe?

Israeli technology? Yes please. The Palestinians can’t get enough of it.   

The alliance between the hard, secular left and political Islam.”

I've been keeping half an eye on the ups and downs of the Jewish Chronicle. The FT reported the situation while it was still unresolved - I can’t give you the date of publication because won’t let me back into the website now - but here’s the excerpt I managed to grab, explaining the way things stood back then:

“The Kessler Foundation, a charitable trust that has owned the Jewish Chronicle since 1984, submitted an offer to the proposed liquidators Begbies Traynor this week, which would have seen them acquire the assets of both publications and run them as a merged publication. 

But a rival bid from a consortium through lawyers Osborne Clarke has also been submitted, according to two people familiar with the matter. 

The rival consortium is being fronted by former Downing Street head of communications Robbie Gibb, biographer William Shawcross, former Labour MP John Woodcock,
Rabbi Jonathan Hughes of Radlett United Synagogue, and prominent broadcasters John Ware and Jonathan Sacerdoti.”

Most of whom have been featured in this blog - (funny that.) The consortium’s bid was successful and they reinstated Stephen Pollard as promised. 

Those of you who take the Spectator might have read an article by Charles Moore in the magazine.

“………a new consortium moved fast to intervene, and outbid the existing management in order to reinstate Pollard, see the staff right, pay off the debts and secure the future. Headed by Sir Robbie Gibb, a Gentile, the consortium is serious about reinforcing the Jewish Chronicle’s strength rather than shutting it down. Behind all this I detect a battle for leadership in the community. Those who are braver about confronting Islamist anti-Semitism have prevailed over the outdated establishment view that the greater threat to British Jews is from the far right and that Islamists should be appeased in the name of ‘interfaith dialogue’. 

The consortium’s victory is good news. It would have been a weird epilogue to the successful exposure of Labour’s anti-Semitism under Jeremy Corbyn if the most prestigious Jewish paper in Europe had then folded. As the general election result proved, the supposedly anti-Semitic white working class saw through Corbyn. The rising danger to Jews — as, though more surreptitiously, to Christians — comes from the alliance between the hard, secular left and political Islam.”

Ah, the last few words open a Pandora’s box of inconvenient and hard to answer questions.

The reason for this post is simply this. (And it’s even BBC related) 

Stephen Pollard says:  ”According to the BBC, antisemitism is just a political choice”. 

A particularly annoying photo of the BBC’s Fran Unsworth illustrates the piece. In it, she’s looking both startled and extremely pleased with herself all at once. 

The issue concerns a knotty problem. How much does political or personal prejudice affect one’s professional credibility? We’re talking about renowned antisemites being invited onto the Beeb to opine about supposedly unconnected matters. Notably but not exclusively, as per that Panorama.

Maybe there’s an element of  ‘intersectionality’ here? To what extent does a person’s race, class, and gender prejudice create a unique mode of discrimination dent one’s entire credibility? 

Can one’s irrationality in the form of racial hatred - viz  “the cognitively dissonant alliance between the hard, secular left and political Islam” be completely divorced from other areas of one’s personality. For example, does it affect one’s expertise in a seemingly unrelated sphere? Does that make sense?

Let’s temporarily forget Professor Ashton, whom Fran Unsworth says is “eminently well qualified to speak about this subject [public health]”. Let’s examine her reasoning, by using a more extreme example like, say, the late Stephen Hawking. 

Stephen Hawking was so highly regarded as a theoretical physicist, cosmologist and author that his reputation as such is untouchable and sealed forever. But even he fell foul of pressure from the hard, secular left and political Islam in his irrational decision to  join the academic boycott of Israel by rejecting an invitation to attend a conference there (despite relying on Israeli sourced technology  to help keep him alive.)  That was just common or garden hypocrisy, but we’re not concerned with that at the moment.

NYT has:

The conference, called “Facing Tomorrow 2013,” is billed as a meeting place for exploring the developments shaping the future of Israel, the Jewish people and the world. Its program includes former heads of state, academics, artists and business executives. Former President Bill Clinton is to receive an award from Mr. Peres.
Also listed among the speakers is Munib al-Masri, a Palestinian tycoon from the West Bank city of Nablus who has been working to promote internal Palestinian reconciliation.

If that is indeed an accurate description of the event that Hawking boycotted, doesn't the decision to boycott it look a bit stupid and ill-conceived? It does to me. 

However, as I know quite a bit more about factually and historically illiterate antisemitism than I do about theoretical or any other kind of physics, all I can possibly ask is ‘does a specific demonstration of irrationality and prejudice dent one’s whole credibility? A little bit? Not at all?  Does stupidity, prejudice and irrationality run through one like the proverbial stick of rock?

What I do know is that Stephen Hawking’s and professor John Ashworth’s reputations are seriously flawed in the eyes of this non-expert, and as far as Fran Unsworth's reputation is concerned, wheeling out the ‘Freeze Peach’ argument certainly dents the remaining dregs of it.

The issue here is that while antisemitism under the accepted definition is not actually illegal, and we don’t want to create a bespoke version of a blasphemy law to make it so, what can most effectively be done to show disgust and disapproval where anti-Jew prejudice raises its head?

For the BBC, maybe keeping known antisemites out of the limelight would go along with the spirit of the zeitgeist. However, as we’ve been saying for the last umpteen years, the BBC is not minded to keep antisemites out of the limelight. The BBC has tacitly taken the side of the antisemites and promotes the hard, secular left and political (and particularly cultural) Islam at every opportunity. It has made antisemitism a political choice and it’s not afraid to say so.

A detailed dossier

The Jewish Chronicle has a leader column this week which surely ought to make the BBC sit up and take notice: 

BBC Arabic’s anti-Israel bias is a problem for the region  

What is the purpose of the BBC’s Arabic service? The answer might seem obvious — to bring the BBC’s editorial standards to coverage of Arab countries in their own languages. But its output reveals what seems to be a very different purpose: to promote a view of the Middle East with which we are all wearily familiar, in which Israel is the wicked enemy and those who fight it are heroes. That includes news coverage in which Jerusalem is called “the occupied city”, the Israeli army the “Israeli Occupation Forces” and the PLO “the Palestinian Resistance”. The anti-Israel bias of BBC news in general has long been an issue, but the specific failings relating to its Arabic service are of a different order of magnitude. As our investigation reveals, the BBC has itself admitted to 25 mistakes in its Arabic coverage in just over two years. But that figure barely scratches the surface of the problem.  

In this week’s JC Essay, David Patrikarakos shows how polling in parts of the Arab world show a move towards a more favourable view of Israel; a slow move, but a move nonetheless. One of the blocks to progress is the BBC’s Arabic service. Instead of being given the facts, impartially and without bias, viewers are often given barely more than anti-Israel propaganda. This matters because it means the BBC is itself part of the problem in the Middle East. Last year, the BBC published new impartiality guidelines, supposedly to be enforced by a senior executive. Ken MacQuarrie, the man appointed to the role, is paid £325,000 a year. We would suggest that he might now start earning it by turning his attention to BBC Arabic.

There's a lot of damning detail in Jonathan Sacerdoti and Gary O'Shea's JC accompanying investigation into BBC Arabic's "anti-Israel bias and inaccuracies" and it's quite something to learn that the BBC has been compelled to admit 25 "mistakes" in its Arabic coverage of Israel in just over two years, "issuing on average nearly one correction every month". It suggests at best that standards at the BBC's Arabic Service aren't what they ought to be.

The BBC has been given "a detailed dossier of apparent breaches" this week. 

As well as listing the inaccuracies and the forced apologies, the dossier accuses the BBC of "systematically downplaying terror attacks on Israelis; repeatedly using Hamas-inspired language; showcasing extreme views without challenge; and publishing a map in which Israel was erased". 

According to the piece, the BBC has apologised in recent years, among other things concerning BBC Arabic, for:

• A "fawning" portrait of a Hamas terrorist.
• Describing Jerusalem as “the occupied city”.
• Calling the Israeli army the “Israeli Occupation Forces”.
• Describing the PLO as “the Palestinian Resistance”.
• Referring to nine victims of a terrorist attack as “nine Jewish settlers”, though four weren't Jewish and none was a settler.

Also detailed is the fact that BBC Arabic repeatedly calls the West Bank, Gaza and even Israel “Palestine”, despite its own style guide outlawing the term.

Strikingly, the JC notes the service's employment (one as a correspondent, another as an editor) of two journalists who previously worked at the Hezbollah-owned TV station Al-Manar (a channel designated a “Terrorist Entity” by the US).

BBC Arabic are also accused of "regularly giving a platform" to blog favourite, Abdel Bari Atwan - though the BBC News Channel has been indulging his extreme views on Dateline London for well over a decade now. At least on Dateline, he was sometimes challenged. Apparently, BBC Arabic hasn't provided “appropriate challenge and / or other context”. 

One I'd not heard of came last May: BBC Arabic "showcased social media comments which celebrated a sci-fi drama that envisioned the destruction of the Jewish state". 

The article also says:

The corporation has also appeared to depart from editorial standards in its Arabic output with respect to reporting terror attacks. According to the BBC style guide, journalists must “report acts of terror quickly, accurately, fully and responsibly”. But while the BBC reported in English on 34 fatal terror attacks on Israeli civilians between 2015 and 2020, its Arabic service covered just 25 of these, analysts said, seriously downplaying the extent of Palestinian brutality.  

A BBC spokesperson has responded already: “BBC Arabic shares exactly the same principles of accuracy and impartiality as BBC News in English, and we strongly reject the suggestion that its impartiality is compromised.”

Instead of the usual kneejerk dismissal, however, the BBC would do better to thank the people behind the study for their efforts, and then go away and think about all that they've been presented with here. 

They've a really big problem if they don't see that there could be a big problem with the BBC Arabic service here that needs careful consideration and maybe serious action.