WAR P0RN

The BBC’s ongoing propaganda war against Israel has reached a crescendo. Now it’s official. The war plan goes like this. At the first sign of trouble, simply whip out an image, verbal, visual or subliminal, of a Palestinian baby, and you’ve won your own little war. 

Owen Jones has obviously been hanging on Jon Donnison’s every Tweet. Just so that this arrogant little shit could show he ‘knew’ what he was talking about and not merely repeating “statistics”, he armed himself with the name and age of the poor little baby little boy whose corpse has been paraded before the cameras by his father,  BBC ‘journalist’ Jihad Mishrawi, in preparation for his appearance on Question time. He had also armed himself, in this battle with-a-forgone-conclusion, with a few extra cheap’n’cheerful crowd-pleasers; a handful of cherry-picked half true/half false morsels and a nasty and very stupid insinuation that this baby’s death gave the lie to Israel’s claims that they don’t target civilians. The crowd lapped it up.  Oh! how they cheered.

The BBC uses its well-known audience selection procedure to breathe life into the flagging Question Time formula. A left-leaning majority in both audience and panel ensures that righteousness will prevail, with a pinch of dissent thrown in to spice things up. This strategy enabled them to bung Daniel into the lions den for the edification of the masses, as they mischievously led a kippah-clad young man into the arena to ask the dreaded question and be duly humiliated by the answer. A devious deed done in the name of ratings and entertainment. Trickery like this is more than mischief-making; under the circumstances it’s rabble-rousing to a sinister degree.

It’s now a given, BBC style, that Israel is the villain in any given situation. In the topsy turvy world the BBC inhabits ’Palestine” is the underdog. It’s Israel that is preventing peace. it’s Israel that is expanding into Palestinian territory. It’s Israel that is targeting civilians. it’s Israel that has no regard for human rights. It’s Israel that is illegal, immoral and barbaric.

Owen Jones’s histrionic performance was almost superfluous, because the audience already “knew” that the lies he was excreting were ‘true’. True enough for them at any rate.

The alarming thing about it was that none of the other panellists or the chairman intervened throughout the whole diatribe nor challenged any of the falsehoods and exaggerations that were made. Even if they knew exactly what was wrong with Jones’s litany of inaccuracies and lies, which I doubt, the atmosphere was such that any credibility any one of them might have had with the general public would be up in smoke before they even ventured their first “But.”

That ear-achingly shrill-voiced Jennifer Tracey of iPM spoke to a dancer who objected to the hysterical protests that have recently disrupted performances of an Israeli dance company. The entire conversation was conducted from the BBC’s mutually-assured presumption that Israel is diabolical enough to merit protests, boycotts and general condemnation, the only question being by what methods? They brought in Scottish poet, playwright and performer Liz Lochead to confirm that yes, interrupting cultural events was the right thing to do. She had been to Palestine, so she knew all about it. “Brand Israel” is the epitome of evil. 

Then of course there’s Jon Donnison and his mawkish war-porn broadcast From Our Own Correspondent. See this,  this and this.

The scary thing is that there is such an atmosphere of hostility and ignorance over this topic that has become very intimidating. I’m saying this because it’s more obvious than ever before. The BBC has dispensed with its impartiality obligations over Israel, because now it knows it can.